In forensic dentistry, age is estimated using dental radiographs. Our goal is to automate these steps using image processing and pattern recognition techniques. With a dental radiograph, the contour is extracted and features such as apex, width and tooth length are dete
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In forensic dentistry, age is estimated using dental radiographs. Our goal is to automate these steps using image processing and pattern recognition techniques. With a dental radiograph, the contour is extracted and features such as apex, width and tooth length are determined, which are used to estimate age. Optimizing the resolution of radiographic images is an important step in contour extraction and age estimation. In this article, the aim is to improve the image resolution in order to extract the appropriate area and proper segmentation of the tooth, which makes it possible to estimate age better. In this model, due to the low resolution of radiographic images, in order to increase the accuracy of extracting the desired area of each tooth (ROI), the image resolution increases using spatial entropy based on the spatial distribution of pixel brightness, along with another increasing resolution method, like the Laplacian pyramids. Increasing the resolution of the image leads to the extraction of appropriate ROI and the removal of unwanted areas. The database used in this study is 154 adolescent panoramic radiographs, of which 73 are male and 81 are female. This database is prepared from Babol University of Medical Sciences. The results show that by using fixed tooth segmentation methods and only by applying the proposed effective method to improve image resolution, the extraction of appropriate ROI increased from 66% to 78% which shows a good improvement. The extracted ROI is then delivered to the segmented block and the contour extracted. After contour extraction, age is estimated. The age estimation using the proposed method is closer to the manual age estimate compared to the method that does not use the proposed algorithm to increase the image resolution.
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