The off-season of dental cementum investigations. A critical appraisal of season-of-death prediction in medico-legal investigations

Authors

Benoit Bertrand
Ahmad Kaddoura
Eugénia Cunha
Anne Bécart
Didier Gosset
Valery Hédouin
Carina Marques, The University of Texas Rio Grande ValleyFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-2025

Abstract

It has been suggested that death seasonality could be estimated based on the dark/bright appearance of the outermost dental cementum deposit. The few existing studies show variable accuracy rates. The question whether estimating season-of-death based on dental cementum represents a realistic and achievable goal can arise. This work, based on a software-assisted procedure and direct human observation, aims to critically evaluate the applicability of dental cementum to estimate the season-of-death in forensic anthropology. The sample consists of 20 canines from individuals belonging to the 21st century Identified Skeletal Collection, University of Coimbra, Portugal, and with documented biodemographic data. Fifty percent of the individuals died during the summer and 50% during the winter. Five non-decalcified 100 μm cross-sections per tooth were prepared, using a standardized protocol. Images of the region of interest, with the acellular cementum, were captured, and imported into FIJI/ImageJ software. Performance of the season-of-death predictions was very low, with 50% accuracy, score of 0.0000 for Matthews Correlation Coefficient, and F1-score of 61.5% for Summer and 28.6% for Winter, were obtained for the observer assessment. For the software model, performance was equally poor, with 52.6% accuracy, score of 0.0272 for Matthews Correlation Coefficient, and F1-score of 30.8% for Summer and 64.0% for Winter. This work is of relevance to the forensic science community by demonstrating the prospects and limitations of dental cementum as a method for estimating seasonality of death.

Comments

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Recommended Citation

Bertrand, Benoit, Ahmad Kaddoura, Eugenia Cunha, Anne Bécart, Didier Gosset, Valery Hédouin, and Carina Marques. "The off-season of dental cementum investigations. A critical appraisal of season-of-death prediction in medico-legal investigations." Archives of Legal Medicine 16, no. 1 (2025): 200519. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aolm.2024.200519

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Publication Title

Archives of Legal Medicine

DOI

10.1016/j.aolm.2024.200519