Age estimation from mandibles in Malay: A 2D geometric morphometric analysis

Area of Science:

• Forensic Anthropology
• Biomedical Imaging
• Human Anatomy

Background:

• Mandibular morphology exhibits variations across populations and age groups.
• Accurate age estimation is crucial in forensic odontology.
• Geometric morphometrics (GM) offers a quantitative approach to analyze shape variations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare mandibular size and form across different age groups in the Malay population.
• To investigate the utility of GM analysis of dental panoramic tomography (DPT) for age estimation.
• To establish a radiographic method for age identification in forensic contexts.

Main Methods:

• GM analysis was performed on 400 DPT specimens using MorphoJ and tpsDig2 software.
• Twenty-seven landmarks were applied to DPT radiographs to capture mandibular shape.
• Mandibular variations were analyzed across four age groups (15-54 years) using GPA, ANOVA, PCA, DFA, and CVA.

Main Results:

• GM analysis explained 81% of mandibular shape diversity within the first eight principal components.
• Procrustes ANOVA and Mahalanobis distances showed significant shape differences among all age groups (P < 0.001).
• Cross-validation and discriminant function tests yielded classification accuracies ranging from 90-72% and 81-49%, respectively.

Conclusions:

• Radiographic GM analysis provides a simple, non-invasive method for age estimation using the mandible.
• GM analysis effectively visualizes age-related changes in mandibular shape.
• This technique holds significant potential for aiding age identification in forensic odontology.