Dental Age Estimation by Means of Video Spectral Comparator

Estimation of age is standard procedure during forensic exa-mination. Dental methods can be used to estimate age. There is a wide range of such methods. The oldest dental method of age esti-mation in adults was described by Gustafson in 1950 (1, 2, 3, 4). This is the first method that proposed using statistical methods in cal-culating age on the basis of teeth. In 1994 and 1995, Kvaal and Sol-heim worked on using dental ra-diography to estimate age. These non-sectioned or non-destruc-tive methods of age estimation are highly regarded in archaeological studies and in identifying living persons where we cannot afford to “sacrifice” a tooth (5, 6, 7). The main focus of method proposed by Kvaal and Solheim is on regres -sive changes that are visible on ra -diographs. For example, deposi-tion of secondary dentin results in decrees of pulp cavity. Measuring the dimensions of the pulp cavity on radiographs can indirectly give an estimate of the quantity of sec-ondary dentin (5, 6, 8). One have to have in mind that radiographs are part of standard dental pa-tients records, so it is important to search for different ways of exami-nation in order to obtain more an -te-mortem and post-mortem in-formation.There are many ongoing re-search projects in the world to-day dealing with issues of age es-timation. Most are based on Gus-tafson’s criteria, individual or variously combined and in con-junction with different statistical methods. It is believed that dif-ferent techniques, new methods and using statistical methods pre -vents subjective judgments by re-searchers and enables more pre-cise age estimation. The VSC 5000