Accuracy of the radiographic methods of Willems, Cameriere and Blenkin-Evans on age estimation for Turkish children in the northwest Anatolia region

The aim of this study is to compare the accuracy of the Willems Method (WM), Cameriere Method (CM) and Blenkin-Evans Method (BM) in the same study sample and determine which one is more suitable for Turkish population. This study included panoramic radiographs of 1024 individuals (619 boys and 585 girls) aged between 6.00 and 15.99 years. Dental age (DA) was calculated using WM, CM and BM for the total study sample, and separately, taking into account age groups and gender. Repeatability statistics evaluated with Cohen's Kappa test. The differences between chronological age (CA) and the DA were statistically tested using a paired sample t-test and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. WM overestimated the CA by 0.23 years, while both CM and BM underestimated it by 0.51 and 0.05 years, respectively. In all samples, the DA-CA difference was significant in all methods with one exception BM in boys. Although WM and BM both seem satisfactory in age estimation for children at the northwest Anatolia region of Turkey, BM performs slightly better than CM and it has shown the most accurate results except for the 15 year age group.