Controversies in age estimation from developing teeth

Abstract

Background: Numerous dental reference data exist to estimate age from developing permanent teeth.

Aim: To compare the performance of reference data that provide a point estimate using the developing second molar.

Methods: Performance of several methods estimating age using mandibular second molar formation was compared using the Maber test sample (age = 3–16) of 946 dental radiographs. Mean difference and mean absolute difference between dental and chronological ages were calculated. The percentage of individuals with mean absolute difference <1 year was counted across age group and tooth stage. Results for the choice of Demirjian or Moorrees tooth staging, pooled-sex, opposite sex reference data, selected stages (initial cusp tips, crown complete, root half and root complete) and statistical approaches were compared.

Results: Tooth reference data conditioning on age, particularly probit mean age (age-at-transition) adapted for age prediction performed best. Results using sex-specific reference data, Moorrees stages and selected Moorrees stages were marginally better than other methods. No method performed well for ages 15 and 16 years.

Conclusion: Adapted maturity data L9a and N25a reference data for this tooth performed best across age categories and tooth stages, with a mean absolute difference of 0.8 year.

• Accuracy
• crown and root stage
• dental age estimation
• dental radiograph
• permanent tooth
• tooth stage

Acknowledgement

I am very grateful to Lyle Konigsberg for valuable and helpful discussion.

Declaration of interest

The author reports no conflict of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of this paper.