Specific oral and maxillofacial identifiers in panoramic radiographs used for human identification

Abstract

Radiographically assisted dental identification is an important means for individual identification. Specific identifiers help to quickly filter some of the possible corresponding AM and PM images at the beginning. The study seeks specific oral and maxillofacial identifiers in panoramic radiographs. A total of 920 panoramic radiographs from 460 live patients were used. The most recent radiograph served as the surrogate post‐mortem (PM) record of an unidentified person, and the earliest radiograph served as the ante‐mortem (AM) record of the same person. We evaluated the following four groups of identifiers of the images: (1) dental morphology, tooth number, and position; (2) dental treatment and pathology; (3) morphological identifiers of the jaw; and (4) pathological identifiers of the jaw. The ratio of each identifier being identified simultaneously in the AM and PM databases was determined. Specific identifiers were defined as those that appeared at low frequency (ratio: 0%–0.250%). A total of 18 specific oral and maxillofacial identifiers were determined. The specific identifiers were a retained deciduous tooth (0.011%), S‐shaped deflection of a tooth root (0.012%), distal deflection of tooth root (0.017%), inverted impaction (0.018%), malposition (0.038%), supernumerary teeth (0.061%), mesial deflection of tooth root (0.092%), microdontia (0.136%), buccal/lingual impaction (0.188%), cementoma (0.002%), hypercementosis (0.002%), continuous crown (0.004%), pulp calcification (0.023%), attrition (0.030%), residual root (0.106%), root resorption (0.137%), implant (0.156%), and osteomyelitis (0.002%). Identifiers of the teeth and jaw can be used for human identification, and dental identifiers are more specific than identifiers of jaw.