Dental age estimation – Literature review

Abstract

The forensic investigation of unidentified bodies is common in expert practice. Given the various changes that occur with biological human characteristics after death, it is not uncommon for this task to challenge the forensic doctor. The requirement for a forensic practitioner is to provide the most accurate guidelines for the investigation to identify the person. Determining the individual calender age at the time of death involves the use of a variety of biochemical, morphological and histological techniques. Dental age estimation is one of the possible approaches towards that task and the scientific literature provides a wealth of sources of information on a variety of methods, their technical implementation, and the underlying mechanisms. Only when the circle of suspected identities is narrowed, it is possible to proceed to identity verification by DNA-analysis. This is the reason why various techniques and methods for dental age estimation have been researched through the years and the following review aims in presenting a concise summary of some of the more significant ones.