Improvement of the Forensic International Dental Database (FIDB) for adult age-at-death estimation using root dentin translucency: A simplified alternative methodology

Abstract

Root Dentine Translucency (RDT) has been shown to strongly correlate with adult chronological age. Since the first proposals, several methodological improvements and tests were fulfilled to reduce error and evaluate the performance of the procedure across samples from diverse populations. Recently, a Bayesian calculation model that analyzes both RDT and periodontal retraction (named Forensic International Dental Database; FIDB), was developed to improve the reliability of age estimates, and tested on a global scale. This study aims to evaluate a novel FIDB procedure that introduces a logarithmic transformation into the calculations and utilizes RDT as the sole age predictor. It was conducted on a sample of 142 intact teeth from Peruvian individuals and the lowest errors were observed in the 40-49 and 50-59 years cohorts, with biases ranging from -0.96 to 1.61 years and inaccuracies between 5.73 and 6.16 years. The other cohorts show acceptable margins of error, with biases and inaccuracies remaining below 11 years. The main contribution of this research is the finding that better accuracy can be achieved when age estimation is based solely on RDT measured from intact teeth, excluding periodontal retraction as a relevant estimator. However, these initial trends must be validated on larger, more diverse samples to determine whether this new approach can be confidently applied in worldwide forensic contexts.