Age Estimation Using Digital IOPA- A Short Study

Abstract

Aims and Objectives: The aim of the study is estimating the age of a person from his teeth particularly using the pulp to tooth area ratio. This ratio will be measured from the digital intraoral radiographic images taken for different patients with a sole purpose of estimation the age of the. Each patient’s maxillary central incisors will be evaluated and their pulp to tooth area ratio is taken. Materials and Methods: The study comprises of 60 patients divided into two subsets of 10 test subjects and 50 study subjects. The RVG images of maxillary central incisors were collected and the pulp to tooth area ratio was measured using Image‑Pro Plus ІІ software (Media, Cybernetics, USA). Intraobserver variation was evaluated with paired t-test. Results: The AR was a significant (p-value <0.001) predictor of age with a mean absolute error (MAE) of 4.908 years using the formula, Age = 89.778-379.020 (AR). This equation when applied on the test subset revealed no statistically significant difference (p = 0. 232) between estimated and chronological ages with no gender differences. Conclusion: Considering the possible errors ±10 years were added to this method of age estimation provides a fairly accurate and reliable method.