Title: Missing tooth identification and teeth numbering in dental X-ray and photographic imaging

Authors: Vijayakumari Pushparaj; Ulaganathan Gurunathan; Banumathi Arumugam

Addresses: Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai 15, Tamil Nadu, India ' Best Dental Science College, Madurai 15, Tamil Nadu, India ' Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai 15, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract: In major disasters like air-plane crash, bomb-blast, fire accident and flood, the biometric means like finger print, retina, hand print, palm print, face details etc., may not be available. Hence in such a circumstance there is a need for another reliable, unique and useful means like tooth to develop an automated dental identification system. For dental biometric system the ante-mortem records has to be matched against the post mortem records. In the dental identification system, missing tooth detection and teeth numbering are few of the notable issues. This paper addresses these issues with the help of spline function, bifurcation techniques and template matching approaches. This review focuses these issues both for radiographic and photographic dental images since adequate radiographic records may not be available in almost all the instances. Experimental evaluation shows satisfied results which will abet the dental biometrics.

Keywords: bifurcation; dental radiography; dental photographs; missing teeth; morphological operation; spline function; missing tooth detection; teeth numbering; dental X-rays; photographic imaging; automated dental identification; dental biometrics; ante-mortem records; post mortem records; template matching; dental images.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBET.2013.057931

International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, 2013 Vol.13 No.2, pp.185 - 200

Received: 11 Feb 2013
Accepted: 20 Oct 2013
Published online: 27 Sep 2014 *

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