Dental maturity of children in Perth, Western Australia, and its application in forensic age estimation

The dental maturity of 1450 healthy children from Perth, Western Australia, was determined in a cross-sectional study. Orthopantomographs of 690 males and 760 females aged 4-16 years old, were randomly selected from various dental practices and hospitals in the Perth metropolitan area. Dental maturity was determined by the method of Demirjian and Goldstein based on the development of four permanent mandibular teeth. Curves were constructed for the Perth children and then compared to that of Demirjian and other studies using the same method. Girls were more advanced dentally than boys. Perth boys showed more advanced dental maturation than French-Canadian boys for ages 6-10 years. Perth girls showed advancement over French-Canadian girls for ages 5-11 years. The same pattern was seen with Hong Kong Chinese children. London and Finnish children, however, were more advanced for the older age groups, 10-16 years, compared to Perth children. Dental age as determined from maturity scores using this method revealed a highly significant correlation with chronological age. From our results we conclude that the method devised by Demirjian and Goldstein is accurate and reliable for forensic age determination within the Perth population, but variations do exist between different population groups.