Identification method for dental alloy type using a cosine similarity program: A preliminary investigation

Area of Science:

• Forensic Science
• Materials Science
• Analytical Chemistry

Background:

• Dental evidence is crucial for identifying unidentified individuals.
• Alloy composition in dental prosthetics is often underutilized in forensic identification.
• Developing methods to analyze small prosthetic samples can narrow identification searches.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate a method for identifying dental prosthetic alloy types from minimal material.
• To assess the efficacy of wavelength-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (WDS) for elemental analysis of alloys.
• To develop a computational approach for comparing alloy elemental data.

Main Methods:

• Utilized three types of cutting points (white, two silicone) to obtain sample material.
• Performed elemental analysis using wavelength-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (WDS).
• Translated elemental data into multidimensional vectors and calculated cosine similarity against official alloy data.

Main Results:

• Achieved a cosine similarity concordance exceeding 0.8 between WDS results and official alloy data.
• Demonstrated the feasibility of identifying alloy types from small amounts of grinding dust.
• The developed method showed high accuracy in alloy differentiation.

Conclusions:

• The developed program effectively identifies dental prosthetic alloy types.
• This method offers a valuable tool for forensic identification by analyzing minimal sample material.
• WDS combined with vector analysis provides a reliable approach for forensic material identification.