Age Estimation in 0–8-Year-Old Children in France: Comparison of One Skeletal and Five Dental Methods

Abstract

Age estimation in juveniles is a critical procedure in judicial cases for verification of imputability or for civil reasons when adopting children. Several methods based both on skeletal and dental growth have been performed and applied on different populations; nevertheless, few articles have compared different methods in order to test their reliability in different conditions and age ranges, and this is a clear obstacle in the creation of common guidelines for age estimation in the living. A comparison of five dental methods (Anderson, Ubelaker, Schour and Massler, Gustafson and Koch, Demirjian) and one skeletal method (Greulich a Pyle atlas) was performed on a population of 94 children aged between 0 and 8 years. Results showed that, whereas under 2 years all the methods have the same inaccuracy, over 2 years the diagram methods, such as Schour and Massler and Ubelaker’s revised one, have a lower error range than the most frequently used Greulich and Pyle atlas and Demirjian method. Schour and Massler, Gustafson and Koch, and Ubelaker methods showed, respectively, a mean error amounting to 0.40, 0.53, and 0.56 years versus the 0.74 and 0.88 years given by Demirjian and the Greulich and Pyle atlas. An in-depth analysis of the potential of several methods is necessary in order to reach a higher adherence of age estimation with the complexity of growth dynamics.

Precision and Accuracy of Radiological Bone Age Assessment in Children among Different Ethnic Groups: A Systematic Review

“…In addition, 16 of the included studies were conducted in Europe, accounting for 31.37% of the total. Specifically, there were three studies in the United Kingdom [55][56][57], two in Spain [58,59], two in Portugal [60,61], two in Italy [62,63], two in France [64,65], one in Austria [66], one in Germany [67], one in the Netherlands [68,69], one in Sweden [69], and one conducted in Denmark [70].…”

“…Regarding study design, 25 (49.02%) were observational retrospective cohort studies [23,35,40,42,43,48,50,52,54,55,57,58,[61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69]76,79,83,84], followed by 19 (37.25%) crosssectional studies [30,[36][37][38][44][45][46]51,53,59,60,[72][73][74][75]77,78,81,82], and 7 (13.73%) observational prospective cohort studies [39,41,55,56,70,71,80].…”

Accuracy of the third molar maturity index (I3M) for diagnosing the legal majority of young southern Brazilians

“…Bone and/or dental development supports adulthood detection and is researched to develop increasingly precise scientific methods ( 9 ). Dental element formation has mineralization stages according to human growth.…”

Forensic Age Estimation: A Bibliometric Analysis of Research Studies in Web of Science Database

“…Adli yaş tahmini ise kimliklendirme amacıyla canlı ya da cansız bedenlerde üzerinde birçok gerekçeyle yapılan, adli bilimlerde yararlanılan bir kimliklendirme yöntemi olup, ayrıca arkeolojide geçmişte yaşamış toplumlar hakkında önemli bilgiler verebilmektedir. Özellikle çocuklarda, doğum yaşının hatalı girilmesi, erken evlilik, evlat edinme, çocuk işçiliği, göç, seks ticareti, eğitim, insan kaçakçılığı gibi hukuki gerekçelerle gerçek yaşlarının doğrulanması için adli merciler tarafından yaş tahmini talep edilmektedir (1)(2)(3). Adli bilimlerde, bir kurbanın veya şüphelinin yaşının doğru tahmin edilmesi, adli mercilerin soruşturma/kovuşturmayı daraltmasını kolaylaştırabilmekte ve bir suçu çözmeye yardımcı olabilmektedir.…”