Performance of dental pattern analysis system with treatment chronology on panoramic radiography.

The present study was conducted to improve human identification based on dental pattern with adopting chronology of dental treatment within the system. Five hundred adult patients were randomly selected, and their initial and recent panoramic radiography images were assumed as antemortem (AM) and postmortem (PM) images, respectively. For each radiographic image, the dental pattern was analyzed. The analysis system was newly developed considering sequence of dental treatment in time order. AM and PM databases were constructed with information of dental patterns, patient age, and gender. For the PM database, age information was stored as the actual age +/- 10 years, which was defined as the estimated age. According to dental pattern of PM record, the possible AM records were selected as candidates. Then candidates were sorted in order of dental pattern similarity to the PM record, and the rank of the true AM record was identified. The total 500 AM records were reduced to 14.5 +/- 13.4 candidates in average when the dental pattern, gender, and estimated age were considered. When the candidates were sorted in order of similarity, the true AM record received an average ranking of 2.0 +/- 2.6. When dental pattern and gender were considered, 46.7 +/- 42.3 candidates were selected among 500 records and the true AM record was ranked at 3.0 +/- 5.0, in average. The dental pattern analysis adopting dental treatment chronology was contributed to reduce the sample population. This method would become more efficient and comprehensive if the dental pattern analysis process is automatized in the near future.