Detection of missing tooth from dental radiographic and photographic images in forensic odontology

Abstract

Victim identification using dental radiographs is receiving much attention nowadays, since tooth is the more robust key component for forensic odontology. Missing tooth detection is one of the notable issues in dental identification system. Hence, this work proposes a novel method for identifying the persons by considering the missing tooth in addition with the contours of other teeth. Online region-based active contour model (ORACM) is used for shape extraction, and distance-based matching algorithm is used to identify the person by comparing both ante-mortem and post-mortem dental images. It concentrates on radiographs and photographs of dental images since adequate radiograph images may not be available for all circumstances. The proposed method is well suited for person identification, and it could assist forensic odontologists to identify the victims in an accurate manner.