title: Development of a Reference Data Set (RDS) for dental age estimation (DAE) and testing of this with a separate Validation Set (VS) in a southern Chinese population.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Many countries have recently experienced a rapid increase in the demand for forensic age estimates of unaccompanied minors. Hong Kong is a major tourist and business center where there has been an increase in the number of people intercepted with false travel documents. An accurate estimation of age is only possible when a dataset for age estimation that has been derived from the corresponding ethnic population. Thus, the aim of this study was to develop and validate a Reference Data Set (RDS) for dental age estimation for southern Chinese.
  
  
  METHODS
  A total of 2306 subjects were selected from the patient archives of a large dental hospital and the chronological age for each subject was recorded. This age was assigned to each specific stage of dental development for each tooth to create a RDS. To validate this RDS, a further 484 subjects were randomly chosen from the patient archives and their dental age was assessed based on the scores from the RDS. Dental age was estimated using meta-analysis command corresponding to random effects statistical model. Chronological age (CA) and Dental Age (DA) were compared using the paired t-test.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The overall difference between the chronological and dental age (CA-DA) was 0.05 years (2.6 weeks) for males and 0.03 years (1.6 weeks) for females. The paired t-test indicated that there was no statistically significant difference between the chronological and dental age (p > 0.05).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The validated southern Chinese reference dataset based on dental maturation accurately estimated the chronological age.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatric Dentistry, School of Dentistry, International Medical University, Kuala Lumpur 57000, Malaysia. Electronic address: jayakumar83@hotmail.com.
authors.forename: Jayakumar
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Jayaraman
authors.affiliation: Paediatric Dentistry & Orthodontics, Faculty of Dentistry, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. Electronic address: wonghmg@hku.hk.
authors.forename: Hai Ming
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.affiliation: Department of Paediatric Dentistry, School of Dentistry, University of Western Australia, Perth, WA 6009, Australia. Electronic address: profnigelking@mac.com.
authors.forename: Nigel M
authors.initials: NM
authors.lastname: King
authors.affiliation: Department of Orthodontics, Floor 22, Tower Wing, St Thomas Street, King's College Dental Institute, London SE1 9RT, United Kingdom. Electronic address: graham.j.roberts@kcl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Graham J
authors.initials: GJ
authors.lastname: Roberts
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000366:Age Determination by Teeth; D044466:Asian People; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006723:Hong Kong; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019252:Radiography, Dental, Digital; D011862:Radiography, Panoramic; D012016:Reference Values; D014070:Tooth / Q000254:growth & development*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Age estimation; Dental age; Dental maturity; Reference Data Set; Southern Chinese