Background: The appearance of lip prints look like finger prints and are heritable and are supposed to be individualistic. Off lately studies of lip prints (cheiloscopy) has drawn attention of many forensic researchers in solving crime and legal related cases. Aim: The present study was aimed to evaluate the lip print patterns of different individuals in four quadrants of lip and find out the incidence of most prominent pattern in the South Indian Population. Materials & Methods: A total of 200 adult subjects (100 males and 100 females) were included in the study. Suzuki and Tsuchihashi classification devised in 1970 was used to classify the types of grooves and the results were statistically analyzed. Results: Amongst all the lip prints studied, no identically similar lipprint pattern appeared in two subjects. In males Type I pattern was most prominent in all the quadrants (28.7%) followed by Type III pattern (27.7%). In males Type I was more prominent in upper right quadrant (38%) and lower left quadrant (21.8%) and Type III was prominent in upper left (28.2%) and lower right (31%). In females too Type I pattern was prominent in all the quadrants studied (34%). In females lower left quadrant showed the highest frequency of Type I (37%) followed by upper right quadrant (34.6%). Upper left and lower right quadrants showed Type I pattern in 33% respectively. Conclusion: According to the present study lip prints are unique to an individual and can be very essential for identification of a person.

Keywords: Cheiloscopy; Lip prints; Forensic odontology.