Thickness corrected translucency measurement-an efficient tool in age estimation

Dentinal translucency is an established histological parameter for age estimation. Thickness of a ground section is a confounding agent for translucency assessment. The aim of the present study was to assess the interaction of thickness with predictive ability of translucency area/length/grey value for age. Ground sections were prepared of 50 extracted teeth (of known age/gender), thickness was measured, and the scanned image was assessed for area/length of translucency using image-J-v1.50. Simple linear regression analysis was used to correlate age with translucency parameters with thickness as an interaction variable. Translucency length was a better predictor of age than area. The equation with translucency length, average thickness and mean grey value was seen to have the best correlation with age (r =0.708, SEE = 13.346 years). Age estimation using dentinal translucency is feasible and is unaffected by size of the tooth but is influenced by the thickness of the ground section.