Introduction
In this research we develop state-of-the-art techniques in digital image processing to build a prototype Automated Dental Identification System (ADIS). Given the dental record of a subject, the goal of ADIS is to accurately and timely find a short list of candidates that possess identical, or close, dental features to those of the subject. The forensic expert, then, decides which of the few candidates is the subject.
Fig: Illustration of the proposed process for automated dental identification.
The process of identifying an unidentified person using ADIS is briefly illustrated by the above figure: the remains of the person are used to create a postmortem (PM) record that is formed of dental radiographs as well as any available information about the person. The PM record is submitted to ADIS, which in turn retrieves from the dental records repositories a short list of candidates whose records have high similarities to the submitted PM record. Eventually, the forensic expert examines the radiographs of candidates to make a final decision about the identity of the unidentified person.
NSF Video Clip
