Evidence map›Paper›PMID 42104112›Full record

ArticleInternational journal of legal medicine2026

A comparative analysis of YOLOv8 and nnU-Net v2 based pipelines for sex and age estimation from maxillary sinus morphometry on panoramic radiographs.

Mert Ocak, Cumali Çatak, Seçil Aksoy, Kaan Orhan

Abstract readComparative Study
In one paragraph

Article in International journal of legal medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Mert OcakDepartment of Basic Medicine Science- Anatomy, Faculty of Dentistry, Ankara University, Türkiye, Ankara, Turkey. mocak@ankara.edu.tr.
Cumali ÇatakDepartment of Forensic Anthropology, Graduate School of Health Sciences, Ankara University, Ankara, Türkiye, Turkey.
Seçil AksoyDepartment of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology, Faculty of Dentistry, Near East University, Mersin, Türkiye.
Kaan OrhanDepartment of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology, Faculty of Dentistry, Ankara University, Ankara, Türkiye.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

objectiveThis study aimed to develop and compare two deep learning-based segmentation-radiomics pipelines - YOLOv8-Hybrid and nnU-Net v2 - for automated sex classification and age estimation from maxillary sinus morphometry on panoramic radiographs.

methodsA balanced dataset of 1,024 panoramic radiographs (512 males, 512 females; age 18-81 years) was collected from Near East University, North Cyprus. Ground truth sinus annotations were generated by an expert oral radiologist and validated through dual-annotator inter-observer reliability assessment (ICC (2,1) = 0.94-0.97). The YOLOv8-Hybrid pipeline employed YOLOv8n-seg coarse segmentation, U-Net boundary refinement, > 120 morphometric and radiomic features, and CatBoost/XGBoost classifiers. The nnU-Net v2 pipeline used auto-configured 2D U-Net segmentation with identical feature extraction and XGBoost prediction. Both pipelines underwent 5-fold cross-validation with patient-level splitting, transfer learning, Bayesian hyperparameter optimization, and SHAP interpretability analysis.

resultsnnU-Net v2 achieved statistically significant superiority in sex classification (AUC = 0.927 [95% CI: 0.881-0.964]) over YOLOv8-CatBoost (AUC = 0.893 [0.841-0.938]; DeLong p = 0.024, Cohen's d = 0.48). Both pipelines demonstrated comparable age estimation performance (MAE ≈ 7.2 years). YOLOv8 showed exceptional consistency (mAP@50 = 98.19%, CV = 0.77%). SHAP analysis identified bilateral area difference as the most determinant feature (sex: 0.42, age: 0.51). External validation on 50 independent images confirmed model generalizability.

conclusionsThis study provides the first systematic comparison of YOLOv8 and nnU-Net v2 for forensic maxillary sinus analysis. nnU-Net v2 is recommended for precision-critical forensic reporting, while YOLOv8-Hybrid is suited for high-throughput screening. The > 120 radiomic/morphometric features establish a comprehensive framework for automated biological profiling.

Indexed as

Age Determination by SkeletonDeep LearningMaxillary SinusRadiography, PanoramicSex Determination by SkeletonAdolescentAdultAgedAged, 80 and overFemaleHumansMaleMiddle AgedRadiomicsReproducibility of ResultsYoung AdultAge estimationDeep learningMaxillary sinusnnU-NetSex estimationYOLOv8

Identifiers

PMID42104112
PMCPMC13499787

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.