Dental and skeletal maturation as simultaneous and separate predictors of chronological age in post-pubertal individuals: a preliminary study in assessing the probability of having attained 16 years of age in the living

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to explore whether combining dental and skeletal maturation data increases the reliability of determining whether an individual is 16 years old or older. This is tentatively done by building probabilistic models for age estimation based on dental and skeletal maturation using a longitudinal sample of eight males, with annual assessments between the ages of 13 and 19, totalling 56 observations. Skeletal maturity was assessed for the radius and ulna using the TW2 method, and dental maturity was assessed for the second and third molars using Demirjian’s scheme. Logistic regression was selected to determine the probability of an individual being 16 years of age and older, by combining dental and skeletal maturity scores and using them separately. The age estimation models combining dental and skeletal maturity scores seem to perform better than either dental or skeletal maturity in isolation. In addition, when in isolation or combination, models based on skeletal maturity scores seem to outperform models based on dental maturity scores. The findings seem to support the notion that dental development is less reliable than skeletal maturity for age estimation in adolescents, but these results have to be confirmed by further studies.

Keywords:

• Age estimation
• dental maturation
• skeletal maturation
• logistic regression
• second molar
• third molar
• radius
• ulna
• minority status

Acknowledgements

HC would like to acknowledge the support and guidance of the late Dr Shelley Saunders, who sparked interest in many areas, particularly this research. The authors would also like to thank the reviewers for their thoughtful comments and corrections.