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Computerized Dental Comparison: A Critical Review of Dental Coding and Ranking Algorithms Used in Victim Identification
Author(s) -
Adams Bradley J.,
Aschheim Kenneth W.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of forensic sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.715
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1556-4029
pISSN - 0022-1198
DOI - 10.1111/1556-4029.12909
Subject(s) - coding (social sciences) , computer science , algorithm , data mining , sorting , software , mathematics , statistics , programming language
Comparison of antemortem and postmortem dental records is a leading method of victim identification, especially for incidents involving a large number of decedents. This process may be expedited with computer software that provides a ranked list of best possible matches. This study provides a comparison of the most commonly used conventional coding and sorting algorithms used in the United States (Win ID 3) with a simplified coding format that utilizes an optimized sorting algorithm. The simplified system consists of seven basic codes and utilizes an optimized algorithm based largely on the percentage of matches. To perform this research, a large reference database of approximately 50,000 antemortem and postmortem records was created. For most disaster scenarios, the proposed simplified codes, paired with the optimized algorithm, performed better than Win ID 3 which uses more complex codes. The detailed coding system does show better performance with extremely large numbers of records and/or significant body fragmentation.