Long-term validation study of bitewing dental radiographs for forensic identification.

The validity of dental bitewing radiographs for forensic identification, with time lapses between the antemortem and postmortem film of up to 30 years, was tested. The ability to match radiographs from the same subject was expressed using sensitivity and specificity statistics. Although the overall accuracy of the observers was extremely high, it was obvious that radiographs from the same individual, when separated by time intervals greater that 20 years, had significantly reduced accuracy.