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Holistic Facial Composite Creation and Subsequent Video Line-up Eyewitness Identification Paradigm

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Evaluating dental student competency in forensic rugoscopy for human identification.

Panjit Chunhabundit¹, Tawepong Arayapisit¹, Natchalee Srimaneekarn²

¹Department of Anatomy, Faculty of Dentistry, Mahidol University, 6 Yothi Road, Ratchathewi, Bangkok, 10400, Thailand.

Scientific Reports

|December 25, 2025

Summary

Dental students demonstrated strong accuracy in identifying individuals using palatal rugae patterns (rugoscopy). This research highlights their potential supportive role in forensic identification when experts are unavailable.

Keywords:

Dental student Forensic odontology Human identification Palatal rugae

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Area of Science:

Forensic Odontology
Human Identification
Dental Anatomy

Background:

Rugoscopy is a validated forensic identification method.
General dentists' limited forensic training can impact rugoscopy reliability.
Assessing dental students' competency is crucial to bridge this gap.

Purpose of the Study:

To evaluate dental students' proficiency in recognizing and interpreting palatal rugae for forensic identification.
To determine the accuracy and reliability of rugoscopy performed by future dental practitioners.
To address the competency gap in forensic identification among general dental professionals.

Main Methods:

Fifty-four final-year dental students acted as evaluators.
Forty modified maxillary casts (teeth removed) were used for matching exercises.
Test-retest reliability was assessed using prevalence-adjusted bias-adjusted kappa (PABAK).

Main Results:

Mean accuracy for rugoscopy-based identification was 83.06% (±15.49%).
Reliability scores ranged from substantial to almost perfect (74.07%–96.30%).
Average matching time was 1.37 minutes per cast.

Conclusions:

Trained dental students can achieve significant accuracy and reliability in palatal rugae identification.
Dental students can serve as valuable assets in forensic identification, particularly when forensic odontologists are scarce.
Standardized criteria are recommended to further enhance accuracy and reliability in rugoscopy.