Dental age estimation using incremental lines of cementum

Forensic odontology is a specialty of dentistry which in the interest of justice deals with the examination of dental evidence for evaluation and presentation of the dental findings. An important aspect of forensic odontology is the identification of age, sex and race of an individual based on their dental characteristics. Various methods utilizing the dentin translucency, cemental annulations, attrition, pulp-tooth ratio, amino acid racemization among others are available for dental age estimation. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the efficiency of incremental lines of cementum in age estimation. Ten freshly extracted teeth were histologically observed using light microscope and image analysis software for assessment of incremental lines of cementum. The incremental lines were counted, and the age was estimated using a prescribed formula. The estimated age was then compared with the actual age of the individual to determine its efficiency. The preliminary study results indicated a positive correlation between estimated age and the actual age in 70% of the samples. Thus, it can be concluded that cemental annulations could serve as an important factor in age determination. Further analysis with larger sample size and advanced techniques will help in improving the accuracy of this method.