Useful tools for the age 18 estimation in forensic radiology / 中国法医学杂志

ABSTRACT

The age of 18 is an important criterion in judicial trial, immigrant and competitive sports. Consequentially, the estimation of age 18 is a key issue in forensic practice and research. The extremitas sternalis claviculae, iliac crest, third molar, and the proximal limb of the limb bone were usually used as indictors of age 18. The results of the previous studies demonstrated that those indictors could be beneficial to the estimation of age 18. The X-ray, CT, ultrasound and MRI of different indictors were widely utilized for the estimation of age 18, particularly the thin-layer CT. But due to the non-radiation, MRI will be a trend for forensic age estimation in the future. Whilst in the previous studies, the descriptive analysis was applied for the estimation of age 18, but due to the low statistic efficiency, it is unsuitable for forensic age estimation, and the future studies should pay attention to the high efficiency statistical methods, for instance, the ROC curve or the data mining.