Bone age assessment of children using a digital hand atlas

Abstract

We have developed an automated method to assess bone age of children using a digital hand atlas. The hand atlas consists of two components. The first component is a database which is comprised of a collection of 1400 digitized left hand radiographs from evenly distributed normally developed children of Caucasian (CA), Asian (AS), African-American (AA) and Hispanic (HI) origin, male (M) and female (F), ranged from 1- to 18-year-old; and relevant patient demographic data along with pediatric radiologists' readings of each radiograph. This data is separate into eight categories: CAM, CAF, AAM, AAF, HIM, HIF, ASM, and ASF. In addition, CAM, AAM, HIM, and ASM are combined as one male category; and CAF, AAF, HIF, and ASF are combined as one female category. The male and female are further combined as the F & M category. The second component is a computer-assisted diagnosis (CAD) module to assess a child bone age based on the collected data. The CAD method is derived from features extracted from seven regions of interest (ROIs): the carpal bone ROI, and six phanlangeal PROIs. The PROIs are six areas including the distal and middle regions of three middle fingers. These features were used to train the 11 category fuzzy classifiers: one for each race and gender, one for the female, one male, and one F & M, to assess the bone age of a child. The digital hand atlas is being integrated with a PACS for validation of clinical use.

Racial Differences in Growth Patterns of Children Assessed on the Basis of Bone Age

“…Each radiograph of the hand and wrist was obtained with a rigorous data collection protocol (9). The radiographs were obtained with an x-ray generator (Polyphos 50; Siemens, Erlangen, Germany) at 55 kVp and 1.2 mAs.…”

“…All subjects (age range, 1 day to 18 years) were recruited from public schools in Los Angeles County, California, starting in the late 1990s (9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15).…”

Bone age determination in young children (newborn to 6 years old) using support vector machines

“…In the study carried out by Gertych et al, a pediatric endocrinologist performed an investigation of Tanner stage of sexual development, and several medical examinations were conducted on all subjects. As a result, it was determined that the skeletal development of all subjects was normal [18]. For this reason we used the chronological age of the subjects for the classification process.…”

Black Box Integration of Computer-Aided Diagnosis into PACS Deserves a Second Chance: Results of a Usability Study Concerning Bone Age Assessment

“…Beside researchoriented approaches [15][16][17], a commercial system became recently available providing fully automatic BAA measurement [10]. Using such methods, the radiologist must majorly be provided with system interfaces transferring the images from the PACS into the CAD software and resubmitting the result of automated analysis-after medical verification-into his written reading report.…”