Available as a free download to use for making selfie photo shots of your smile and of the lower third of your face. This is the main feature of a new app for smartphones called “Selfie Forensic ID” proposed by Dr. Emilio Nuzzolese, forensic odontologist, Bari (Italy). This app will be presented at the next Forensic Odontology Conference which is organized every three years by IOFOS (International Organization for Forensic Odonto-Stomatology), and will take place in Leuven (Belgium) on September 14th-15th, 2017.
The conference involves the participation of major international experts in forensic dentistry, and offers important updates in the areas of human identification and immigration, forensic analysis of Human bite mark and abuse, dental age estimation and unaccompanied minors.
The “Selfie Forensic ID” app allows users of iOS or Android smartphones to make selfie photos of their smile, i.e. of the upper and lower front teeth, and then post the recorded images tagged with their name, location, and country to the most popular social networks. The app also includes features and services that can be used in case of emergency. This new app introduces for the first time the opportunity of posting photos to social media with the specific aim of feeding the archive with dental data obtainable from the observation and analysis of the upper teeth of people who are missing or need to be identified. In fact, the authors believe that the public readiness to share personal identity information (including selfie photographs and DNA samples) is gradually growing due to the necessity of preventing the risk of remaining a “unidentified body”, with all the ethical, religious, administrative e insurance related consequences that their families would have to face.
«This new app – according to the forensic odontologist – emphasizes the inevitable focus that Forensic Sciences are also placing on social media and their use for investigational purposes during the search for missing or unidentified persons, as already done by police forces».
«This is the first forensic application that combines selfie images and social media as an aid in the odontological-forensic identification process. In any case, the dental data detected during an oral autopsy still need to be compared with the dental data of the missing person, including through the collection of facial images. This is why images that highlight the frontal teeth can become a precious source of information, since they allow to either include compatible subjects or exclude subjects that are clearly incompatible with the biological profile and the dental biography of the subject to be identified» – explains Emilio Nuzzolese, who set up in 2016, through the Italian Civil Protection Organization, a group of volunteer Odontologists and Dental Hygienists called Dental Team DVI Italia,whose goal is to deal with disaster victims identification.
To Free download the App for Android click here.