Accuracy of the London Atlas, Haavikko's Method and Cameriere's European Formula of dental age estimation in Turkish children

Abstract

Age estimation is a mandatory procedure when the chronological age is unknown or uncertain. Dental development is the preferred characteristic for estimating a child's age. There are many methods for dental age estimation, but their reliability can differ between populations. This study compared the accuracy of three of these methods—the London Atlas (LA), Haavikko's method (HM), and Cameriere's European formula (CF)—in Turkish children living in northwestern Turkey. Panoramic radiographs of 980 children from northwestern Turkey aged between 6.00 and 14.99 years were examined for the whole study group and separately for different ages and sexes by all three methods. Statistical differences between chronological age and dental age were tested using the paired sample t-test and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. The LA, HM, and CF accuracies were determined based on the mean absolute error. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient showed that the correlation between chronological age and dental age for both sexes was linear for all methods. The LA overestimated the chronological age by 0.09 years, while HM and CF underestimated it by 0.49 and 0.11 years, respectively. The difference between dental age and chronological age was significant in all samples, for all methods, except for the LA in boys. When boys, girls, and the total sample were evaluated, values with the lowest mean absolute error were obtained by HM and were statistically significant in all three groups. Therefore, HM is more accurate than the LA and CF for dental age estimation in Turkish children living in northwestern Turkey.