THE USE OF INTRAORAL SCANNERS IN FORENSIC ODONTOLOGY: A LITERATURE REVIEW

Abstract

The digital workflow is already ubiquitous in the clinical dental practice, and its advantages can be incorporated to the forensic odontology. Intraoral scanners generate digital casts that can be stored, analyzed and compared using the proper software. It’s a technique that swiftly and precisely registers the object of interest, and can be used on-site, if needed, in mass disasters, for example. The goal of this article is to review the most recent applications of the intraoral scanners and the digital files generated by them in the forensic odontology practice. Nine articles were selected for revision. The studies demonstrate that the existing identification techniques can benefit from the use of intraoral scanners and digital casts. Automated comparison algorithms can be of great contribution to the identification process, decreasing the number of suspects that could match a sample. The creation of a universally accepted protocol, and the calibration of the algorithms when there are great alterations or destruction on the post mortem samples is necessary. Human identification relying solely on bitemark analysis, even with digital techniques, is not recommended, due to examiner bias.