Artificial intelligence in age and sex determination using maxillofacial radiographs: a systematic review

Abstract

In the past few years, there has been an enormous increase in the application of artificial intelligence and its adoption in multiple fields, including healthcare. Forensic medicine and forensic odontology have tremendous scope for development using AI. In cases of severe burns, complete loss of tissue, complete or partial loss of bony structure, decayed bodies, mass disaster victim identification, etc., there is a need for prompt identification of the bony remains. The mandible is the strongest bone of the facial region, is highly resistant to undue mechanical, chemical or physical impacts and has been widely used in many studies to determine age and sexual dimorphism. Radiographic estimation of the jaw bone for age and sex is more workable since it is simple and can be applied equally to both dead and living cases to aid in the identification process. Hence, this systematic review is focused on various AI tools for age and sex determination in maxillofacial radiographs. The data was obtained through searching for the articles across various search engines, published from January 2013 to March 2023. QUADAS 2 was used for qualitative synthesis, followed by a Cochrane diagnostic test accuracy review for the risk of bias analysis of the included studies. The results of the studies are highly optimistic. The accuracy and precision obtained are comparable to those of a human examiner. These models, when designed with the right kind of data, can be of tremendous use in medico legal scenarios and disaster victim identification

Key words: Artificial intelligence (AI), convolutional neural networks (CNN), artificial neural networks (ANN), Machine learning (ML), Deep learning, Mandible, forensic odontology, OPG, Lateral Cephalogram