title: Dental maturity in Belgian children using Demirjian's method and polynomial functions: new standard curves for forensic and clinical use.
abstract: Dental maturity was studied from dental panoramic radiographs of 2523 Belgian children (1255 girls and 1268 boys) aged 2 to 18 years. The aim was to compare the efficiency of two methods of age prediction: Demirjian's method, using differently weighted scores, and polynomial functions. The two methods present some differences: Demirjian is used to determine the maturity score as a function of age and polynomial functions are used to determine age as a function of the maturity score. We present, for each method, gender-specific dental maturity tables and curves for Belgian children. Girls always present advanced dental maturity compared with boys. The polynomial functions are highly reliable (0.21% of incorrect classifications) and the percentile method, using Belgian weighted scores, is very accurate (+/- 2.08 years on average, between 2 and 16 years of age).
authors.affiliation: Universite de Montreal, departement d'anthropologie, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. nilsc@wanadoo.fr
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Chaillet
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Willems
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Demirjian
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000366:Age Determination by Teeth / Q000379:methods*; D000367:Age Factors; D000465:Algorithms; D001530:Belgium; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005544:Forecasting; D005553:Forensic Dentistry; D006128:Growth; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009805:Odontogenesis / Q000502:physiology; D011862:Radiography, Panoramic; D012727:Sex Characteristics