Establishing Personal Identification Based on Specific Patterns of Missing, Filled, and Unrestored Teeth

Abstract

The primary goal of this research is to examine the overall utility of nonradiographic dental records for the establishment of individual identifications. It was found that even without radiographic lines of comparison, charts and notes that accurately detail a missing individual's antemortem dental condition can be essential for establishing an identification. Based on an analysis of two large datasets, individual dental patterns were determined to be generally unique, or at least very uncommon. Through this type of empirical comparison, it is possible to establish a strong, quantifiable association with a missing individual. The results of this research indicate that a definitive number of points of concordance do not need to be established in dental identification cases. Each case must be assessed individually. The critical factor is to remove subjective judgment calls from dental comparisons. This research has proposed a new method of empirical comparison that allows forensic odontologists to derive objective frequency information regarding the occurrence of specific dental patterns in the general population. The method is similar to that used for mtDNA casework, and a computer program (OdontoSearch) has been developed to make the technique accessible. It was found that even a small number of common dental characteristics may produce a very rare dental pattern, a point that may be counterintuitive to many forensic odontologists.

Forensic Odontology in the Era of Computer and Technology

“…Through this type of empirical comparison, it is possible to establish a strong, quantifiable association with a missing individual. [16] …”

Oral health condition of the Brazilian adolescents and its influence on dental diversity patterns for human identification

“…Dental radiographs are one of the most desirable pieces of antemortem evidence, but they are not always available, and the comparison of antemortem and postmortem data characteristics must be based on handwritten charts and notes. 4 This investigation is specifically concerned with non-radiographic dental comparison.…”

“…2 The combination of the anatomical variability of the teeth among individuals with the several types of dental treatment performed creates numerous dental patterns. 3 Adams (2003) 4 showed the necessity of exploring the dental diversity patterns (missing, filled, and higid teeth) for forensic identification when the more frequently used statistical methods are inaccurate or inappropriate. He used statistical arguments based on the number of possible combinations of dental characteristics to suggest that an individual's dental health pattern should be more frequently used for identification due to its singularity.…”

“…Based on analysis of large datasets, it is possible to verify dental diversity of a population. 3,4,8 In Brazil, The National Oral Health Survey carried out in 2010 verified the oral health condition of Brazilian people and found that the DMF (decayed, missing, and filled teeth) index of Brazilian adolescents had decreased from 6.1 in the survey performed in 2003 to 4.2, a 30% reduction. 9,10 This finding motivated the present study, as it was necessary to determine whether this increase in the number of higid teeth could reduce the dental diversity among adolescents and thus compromise the discrimination potential of dental patterns in human identification.…”

Bayes in biological anthropology

“…Here we expand on victim identification, making the simplifying assumption that there is no commingling of remains so that we are solely attempting to make identifications. Rather than working directly with posterior probabilities as in the previous section, we will work with likelihood ratios and prior odds as this is much more common in the disaster victim and personal identification literature (Goodwin et al, 1999;Adams, 2003b;Brenner and Weir, 2003;Alonso et al, 2005;Christensen, 2005;Lin et al, 2006;Steadman et al, 2006;Prinz et al, 2007;Kaye, 2009;Budowle et al, 2011;Butler, 2011;Hartman et al, 2011;Abraham et al, 2012;Montelius and Lindblom, 2012;Jackson and Black, 2013). As mentioned above, likelihood ratios from DNA are typically reported as the inverse of the population frequency for the matched (between ante-mortem and post-mortem) genotype, although this is only possible when a "direct reference" ante-mortem sample is available (so that the numerator is equal to 1.0).…”