Age estimation of individuals aged 5-23 years based on dental development of the Indonesian population

Dental development can be used to estimate age for forensic purposes. However, most of the currently available methods are less reliable for the Indonesian population due to population variability. This study presents a new method and evaluates other methods that utilize dental development to estimate the age of Indonesian people. Panoramic radiographs of 304 young Indonesian people aged 5-23 years old were analysed for deciduous tooth root resorption, permanent tooth calcification, and eruption. The extent of tooth root resorption was determined based on AlQahtani's modified Moorrees et al. method. Tooth calcification was classified based on a modified Demirjian et al. method. Tooth eruption was evaluated based on AlQahtani's modified Bengston system. The sequence of tooth root resorption, and permanent tooth calcification and eruption were grouped into 19 age categories (from 5-23 years old) in an atlas. The differences between males and females, between maxillary and mandibular teeth, and between right and left teeth were also analysed. There were minimal significant differences of tooth development between males and females, and between the right and left teeth (P > 0.05), while the maxillary and mandibular dental development was significantly different (P < 0.05). The newly developed atlas showed the development of the right side of maxillary and mandibular tooth of combined sex of Indonesian population. Another 34 panoramic radiographs of known-age and sex individuals from Indonesia were assessed using the newly developed Atlas of Dental Development in the Indonesian Population, Ubelaker's Dental Development Chart, The London Atlas of Human Tooth Development and Eruption by AlQahtani, and the Age Estimation Guide-Modern Australia population by Blenkin-Taylor. Accuracy was assessed by comparing estimated age to actual chronological age using the Bland-Altmand test. Results show that the smallest range of error was found in the Atlas of Dental Development in the Indonesian Population (-0.969 to 1.210 years), followed by The London Atlas of Human Tooth Development and Eruption by AlQahtani (-2.013 to 1.990 years), the Age Estimation Guide-Modern Australia population by Blenkin-Taylor (-2.495 to 2.598 years), and the Dental Development Chart by Ubelaker (-2.960 to 3.289 years). These findings show that the Atlas of Dental Development constructed in this study performs better than the other three methods and presents greater accuracy of age estimation in the Indonesian population.Key pointsDental development such as deciduous tooth root resorption, permanent tooth calcification, and tooth eruption can be used to estimate age for forensic purposes.The development of the teeth are influenced by genetic, ethnicity, and sex, therefore an age estimation method must be constructed based on the same population.There were minimal significant differences in tooth development between male and female, and between right and left teeth, but there was significant difference between maxillary and mandibular teeth.The Atlas of Dental Development in the Indonesian Population constructed in this study allowed more accurate age estimation of the Indonesian sample than the other methods tested. Supplemental data for this article are available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/20961790.2021.1886648.