A new mathematical modelling based shape extraction technique for Forensic Odontology

J Forensic Leg Med. 2017 Apr:47:39-45. doi: 10.1016/j.jflm.2017.02.006. Epub 2017 Feb 28.

Abstract

Forensic Odontology is a specific means for identifying a person in which deceased, and particularly in fatality incidents. The algorithm can be proposed to identify a person by comparing both postmortem (PM) and antemortem (AM) dental radiographs and photographs. This work aims to introduce a new mathematical algorithm for photographs in addition with radiographs. Isoperimetric graph partitioning method is used to extract the shape of dental images in forensic identification. Shape matching is done by comparing AM and PM dental images using both similarity and distance measures. Experimental results prove that the higher matching distance is observed by distance metric rather than similarity measures. The results of this algorithm show that a high hit rate is observed for distance based performance measures and it is well suited for forensic odontologist to identify a person.

Keywords: CMC curve; Dental photographs; Dental radiographs; Distance measure; Person identification; Similarity measure.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Forensic Dentistry / methods*
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
  • Models, Theoretical*
  • Photography, Dental*
  • Radiography, Dental*