Selfies as a tool for Forensic Dental Identification

Social media applications can be valuable investigative tools in the search for missing and unidentified persons. As yet, no forensic App exists with the aim of assisting the human identification process, through the search of antemortem data to be used as adjunct data in the comparison with postmortem data collected. Features such as diastema rotated or wrongly positioned teeth, lip anomalies, recognizable fixed prosthetics, dental crown discolourations, dental or cutis piercing could represent strong identifiers in the comparison of Antemortem and Postmortem data (Nuzzolese et al., 2018)

Selfie Forensic ID App is a free Smartphone application, which employs selfie and faces photographs as an archive of dental data and dental features of the front teeth of missing persons sharing with Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter Social Networks (available for free download from both Android and Apple store at https://onelink.to/selfieforensic).

The increased number of terrorist attacks and natural disasters which result in the premature death of innocent people underlines the importance of storing personal identification data to avoid bodies remaining unidentified. Also, the phenomena of missing and unidentified persons require a structured collection of all identifying data, as being unidentified is like being disappeared.

For this reason, there will be an increased public willingness to share personal ID information - including selfie photographs and DNA samples - through the understanding of the ethical, religious, administrative e insurance-related consequences should bodies remain unidentified [E. Nuzzolese]

This new App 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 the police agencies.