Development of A Digital Forensic Odontology Workflow Integrating Smartphone-Based 3D Dental Documentation and Telegram-Based Dental Records

Abstract

Background: The availability of complete and accessible antemortem dental records is essential for forensic odontology identification. Conventional dental records have limitations in data storage, retrieval, and documentation standardization. Integration of three-dimensional (3D) dental documentation and electronic dental records may improve forensic dental data management. Purpose: This study aimed to develop and evaluate an integrated digital forensic odontology workflow combining Boxphone-assisted smartphone image acquisition, Blender-based 3D dental model construction, and Telegram-based electronic dental records for individual identification simulation. Methods: This research employed a research and development design followed by system evaluation. Dimensional agreement was evaluated using 44 dental casts, while electronic dental record workflow efficiency was evaluated using 43 simulated patient datasets across manual, Telegram-based, and web-based systems. Parameters included mesiodistal first-molar measurement, data-entry time, and data-retrieval time. Results: The overall mean mesiodistal measurement was 10.83 mm for the reference dental casts and 10.84 mm for the reconstructed 3D models; the difference between the two overall means was 0.01 mm. The Telegram-based system showed a mean data-entry time of 149.41 seconds, compared with 225.27 seconds for the manual record and 259.00 seconds for the web-based system. Mean retrieval time was 6.72 seconds for the Telegram-based system, 21.72 seconds for the manual record, and 8.00 seconds for the web-based system. Conclusion: The integrated workflow showed close group-level dimensional agreement between reference and reconstructed measurements and shorter descriptive task-completion times for the Telegram-based record system in this controlled evaluation