Bone age assessment for young children from newborn to 7-year-old using carpal bones

Abstract

A computer-aided-diagnosis (CAD) method has been previously developed based on features extracted from phalangeal regions of interest (ROI) in a digital hand atlas, which can assess bone age of children from ages 7 to 18 accurately. Therefore, in order to assess the bone age of children in younger ages, the inclusion of carpal bones is necessary. In this paper, we developed and implemented a knowledge-based method for fully automatic carpal bone segmentation and morphological feature analysis. Fuzzy classification was then used to assess the bone age based on the selected features. Last year, we presented carpal bone segmentation algorithm. This year, research works on procedures after carpal bone segmentation including carpal bone identification, feature analysis and fuzzy system for bone age assessment is presented. This method has been successfully applied on all cases in which carpal bones have not overlapped. CAD results of total about 205 cases from the digital hand atlas were evaluated against subject chronological age as well as readings of two radiologists. It was found that the carpal ROI provides reliable information in determining the bone age for young children from newborn to 7-year-old.