Age estimation from mandibles in Malay: A 2D geometric morphometric analysis

Objectives: In this study, the sizes and forms of mandi-bles in various age groups of the Malay population were measured and compared.Methods: Geometric morphometric (GM) analysis of mandibles from 400 dental panoramic tomography (DPT) specimens was conducted. The MorphoJ program was used to perform generalized Procrustes analysis (GPA), Procrustes ANOVA, principal component anal-ysis (PCA), discriminant function analysis (DFA), and canonical variate analysis (CVA). In the tpsDig2 pro-gram, the 27 landmarks were applied to the DPT radio-graphs. Variations in mandibular size and form were categorized into four age groups: group 1 (15-24 years), group 2 (25-34 years), group 3 (35-44 years), and group 4 (45-54 years).Results: The diversity in mandibular shape among the first eight principal components was 81%. Procrustes ANOVA revealed significant shape differences (P < 0.001) among age groups. Mahalanobis distances indicated substantial differences among all age groups; group 1 and group 4 scored highest, at 2.114. The ranges for the cross-validation and discriminant function tests were 90e72% and 81e49%, respectively.Conclusion: GM analysis through radiography is a sim-ple, non-invasive, and non-destructive method of esti-mating age by using the mandible. GM analysis is unique because it can visualize the changes in mandible shape among age groups. This method should aid in age iden-tification in forensic odontology investigations.