Human identification through 3D images: a comparative method based on common dental morphological traits

Abstract

New complementary methods to aid in the rapid identification of human remains, particularly in cases involving multiple victims and heavily degraded bodies, are valued in the forensic field. In these circumstances, the properties and characteristics of teeth make them incredibly useful for human identification. Dental morphological traits, commonly studied in anthropology, exist in the population with varying frequencies, which makes them very informative. Thus, everyone has their own dental trait profile, that may manifest with greater or lesser frequency in the population. We propose a discriminative method by exclusion for the identification of individuals, based on the evaluation of dental traits, using intraoral 3D images. For this purpose, a group of 10 dental traits was chosen to obtain a personal profile in a population group of 76 individuals. Various scenarios were created to analyze different problem cases, by using matching-exclusion tables. Three individuals (problem cases) with dental trait profiles of very low (1/27703 individuals), medium (1/136 individuals), or high frequency in the population (1/42 individuals) were randomly chosen for the experiment.  Using a conservative approach, the most likely candidate for positive identification was determined in eight steps for problem case 1, five steps for problem case 2, and two final candidates were identified in problem case 3, with only one achieving 100% similarity. In contrast, the less conservative approach identified the most likely candidate in four steps for case 1, three steps for case 2, and four steps for case 3. The rarest dental profile did not necessarily require fewer steps. Our work suggests that using the well-known dental morphological traits and recent 3D imaging technology could significantly improve the efficient triage and identification of victims, especially in cases of closed mass disasters.

Keyword: Three-dimensional images, Dental traits, Disaster victim identification, Forensic dentistry, Forensic anthropology