Forensic odontology frequently plays a significant role in identification of the victims of multi-fatality disasters, but not in all. It depends on adequate dental remains surviving the disaster and on the availability of dental records to be successful. This paper describes current practice in the techniques of identification in forensic odontology and outlines recent advances that are moving into the mainstream. Key Points:

Forensic odontology plays a key role in mass disaster victim identification (DVI) when good-quality antemortem (AM) dental records are available. Images including radiographs, computerized tomography (CT) data and three-dimensional (3D) scan data are considered more reliable AM records than written dental charts and odontograms. Interpretation, transcription and comparison of dental datasets are complex processes that should be undertaken only by trained dental professionals. The future of forensic odontology DVI techniques is likely to include the use of 3D datasets for comparison.