Dental age estimation in prenatal, neonatal, and postnatal ages- A review

In forensic medicine, the age of a foetus or an infant can be determined using a plethora of methods. These techniques can be used for a variety of circumstances, including the age of living infants in clinics, the age of bodies during autopsies, or the age between the prenatal 16 weeks and the postnatal 72 weeks, human remains, with an age determination error of 0 to 1 week. if the last menstrual cycle's beginning day is known, the age of the foetus can be calculated during gestation. However, this calculation can be unpredictable due to metrorrhagia or calendar errors. Prenatal ultrasound data can also be used to estimate the foetus' age; this method, which is purely hypothetical, involves converting 2D measures of an image to 3D measurements. The role of teeth in the age estimation of fetuses or infants is unquestionable and has several advantages, as teeth start growing during the prenatal embryonic period as teeth have fewer variations than bones, and are more resilient to outside effects due to their hardness. Generally, for estimating a newborn's age and assessing their progress the parameters, head circumference, birth weight and length are frequently utilized. The purpose of this article is to examine alternative approaches to calculating chronological age in pre-nates, neonates, and postnatal ages from the level of dental development to the time of death.