Precision of Cementum Annulations to Estimate Age: A Polarized Microscope Study

There are various methods in forensic medicine to calculate the age of a person using dental hard tissue, among which cementum can be used as a powerful resource due to its annual deposition as incremental lines. With the above background, the present study was carried out to assess age in Dakshina Kannada individuals using polarizing microscopy using cementum annulations.

Ground sections of the32 extracted teeth with known age and gender teeth were examined using polarizing microscopy. The middle third of the tooth was selected and photographs were taken with 40x the magnification and were transferred to Image J (image analysis software) and cementum annulations were counted.

The chronological age of the individuals was correlated with the age estimated using the two methods using Paired t-test and Pearson’s correlation. Comparatively method 2 of age estimation was better as it showed a lesser difference with the actual age in total as well as among the classifier across tooth and gender. Also, the correlation of age estimated using two methods showed a significant differences in association of the estimated ages when incisors, premolars, females, and total population were measured. This indicates there is consistency in the estimation of age using method 1 and method 2 as they show a lesser accuracy of age estimation compared to the chronological age.

As the results do not correlate with chronological age in most cases and are not significant, the data must therefore be re-analyzed with a larger sample by means of linear regression analysis. This will enable us to derive a new constant and slope of the equation which may be better for predicting age.