LAUSR

Abstract The aim of this study was to develop new software to describe tooth marks from photographs of human bites. Using these images, BitePrint software approximates each tooth mark as an ellipse and the dental arch as a semi-circle. The expert marks the mesiodistal length and the bucco-lingual width of each tooth mark and the software automatically fits an ellipse. The dental arch is calculated by adjusting the circumference with a minimum of three non-aligned ellipses. The software can also calculate the inter-canine distance, rotation, eccentricity, angular position and distance to the arch of each tooth mark. BitePrint can also operate with biting edges obtained from 3D dental casts. Thus, the software represents the bite mark as a set of geometric coefficients that can be used to compare with the biting edges of the dental cast. BitePrint software offers a semiautomatic quantitative approach to bite mark identification.