A total of 300 orthopantomograms were randomly selected from those stored at the Dental Hospital of Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea. Dental patterns were classified into eight types that are commonly observed in dental radiography and converted into a consistent set of codes by a well-trained forensic odontologist. Only permanent dentition was considered for this study. The diversity of dental patterns was calculated for full dentition, maxilla, mandible, and the sextants, respectively. A total of 282 different dental patterns were observed in the full dentition dataset. In the case of the maxilla, 210 different dental patterns were observed; for the mandible, the number of different patterns was 211. The number of different dental patterns of the 4 posterior tooth areas ranged from 85 to 106 and showed no difference between the left and right maxilla and mandible. In the case of the anterior tooth area, however, the number of different dental patterns for the maxilla was 73 and for the mandible, 28. The study concluded that orthopantomography is an effective means of personal identification, based not only on full dentition, but also when only the posterior teeth are available. Thus, orthopantomography was found to be an excellent means of forensic identification. 4 tables and 16 references