Application of the method of Kvaal et al. to digital orthopantomograms

Abstract

Estimation of age in individuals has received considerable attention in the forensic literature. The reduction of size of dental pulp cavity as a result of secondary dentin deposit with increasing age could be used as an indicator of age. This regression change, apart from morphological techniques, can also be analysed by radiological techniques. In 1995, Kvaal et al. reported a new method for estimating the chronological age of adults based on the relationship between age and the pulp size on periapical dental radiographs. In 2005, Paewinsky et al. reported specific regression formulae for dental age calculation. The aim of this work was to evaluate the reproducibility of the original method of Kvaal et al. on digital panoramic radiographs as well as to analyse the application of age-estimation formulae reported in the literature. Orthopantomograms (OPGs) of 100 patients aged between 14 and 60 years old from a private radiology department in Bilbao were selected at random. According to the reported technique, three mandibular teeth were evaluated in each orthopantomogram. The results showed that the method reported by Kvaal at al. cannot be applied to direct digital OPGs. The values of age estimation obtained using regression formulae analysed on digital images were so distant from the real ages that this method must be discouraged as being a reliable one to estimate age on a direct digital OPGs sample.

Human age estimation from lower-canine pulp volume ratio based on Bayes’ theorem with modern Japanese population as prior distribution

“…A radiograph was easier to prepare than ground sections; moreover, radiography could be applied to living humans without extracting the teeth, allowing greater number of samples to be obtained. Therefore, numerous studies have been conducted to date modifying or testing the dental radiograph-based age-estimation methods (Kvaal et al, 1995;Drusini et al, 1997;Kolltveit et al, 1998;Willems et al, 2002;Bosmans et al, 2005;Paewinsky et al, 2005;Cameriere et al, 2007;Meinl et al, 2007;Drusini, 2008;Landa et al, 2009;Du et al, 2011;Cameriere et al, 2013). Meanwhile, with the development of computed tomography (CT) technology, the pulp cavity and the tooth can now be measured in three-dimensional space (Vandevoort et al, 2004;Yang et al, 2006;Someda et al, 2009;Aboshi et al, 2010;Agematsu et al, 2010;Star et al, 2011).…”

Dental age diagnostics by means of radiographical evaluation of the growth stages of lower wisdom teeth

“…Forensic age estimation in living persons is a current area of research in the field of forensic science [2,10,20,21]. At the Institute for Legal Medicine at the University of Zurich (IRMZ), age estimations in living adolescents and young adults in the context of criminal investigations and asylum procedures have been carried out since 1999.…”

Dental Age Estimation in Adults: A Review of the Commonly Used Radiological Methods

“…In total, 20 articles [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] were included and several methods were presented in literature (Table 1). In general the methods were classified into three categories, Kvaal's, Ikeda's, and…”

“…Among the 20 articles, 13 studies [5][6][7][8][9][12][13][14][15][16][17]22,23) were performed on orthopantomograms for measuring of the size of the pulp cavity and 7 studies 4,10,11,[18][19][20][21] were performed on periapical radiographs. Although most studies included range of age, only one study 23) provided insufficient data of age.…”

“…All studies executed a reproducibility test in order to evaluate the accuracy of the measurements except for one study. Eight studies 5,8,9,12,13,19,20,23) carried out measurement of the pulp and tooth size by one observer while 12 studies 4,6,7,10,11,[14][15][16][17][18]21,22) carried out by two observers and reexamined to test intraobserver or interobserver reproducibility of the measurements.…”