U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

Evaluation of Statistical Methods for the Determination of Age of Death Using Dental Root Translucency and Periodontosis

NCJ Number
231203
Journal
Journal of Forensic Sciences Volume: 55 Issue: 3 Dated: May 2010 Pages: 590-596
Author(s)
Aurore Schmitt, Ph.D.; Berengere Saliba-Serre, M.D.; Marie Tremblay, Ph.D.; Laurent Martrille, M.D.
Date Published
May 2010
Length
7 pages
Annotation
The authors of this study evaluated the work of Lamendin and collegues.
Abstract
Lamendin and colleagues (1992) proposed to assess age-at-death from root translucency and periodontosis. Several teeth from the same individual were included in their study. In our work, we evaluate the reliability of their formulas without introducing this bias. Our sample was constituted of 214 individuals (114 males and 100 women) selected from the Terry collection (U.S.A.). The R2 between age and both indicators is equal to 0.33 and 0.08 (p less than 0.001). Based on linear regression, the mean of standard error for individual age prediction was equal to 13.67 years, and the mean interval length is equal to 53.89 years. Multinomial logistic regression and Bayesian approach failed to give satisfactory results when classifying the individuals in age categories. Therefore, the use of root translucency and periodontosis may lead to incorrect age-at-death assessment, and it is thus necessary to complement this approach with other techniques to assess age-at-death. 3 figures, 8 tables, and 28 references (Published Abstract)