A semi-automated method for bone age assessment using cervical vertebral maturation

• Autor(a) principal: Baptista, Roberto Silva [UNIFESP]
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Outros Autores: Quaglio, Camila L. [UNIFESP], Mourad, Leila M. E. H. [UNIFESP], Hummel, Anderson Diniz [UNIFESP], Caetano, Cesar Augusto C., Ortolani, Cristina Lúcia Feijó, Pisa, Ivan Torres [UNIFESP]
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UNIFESP
• Texto Completo: http://dx.doi.org/10.2319/070111-425.1; http://repositorio.unifesp.br/handle/11600/35032
• topic: Decision support systems; Clinical; Age determination by skeleton; Cervical vertebrae; Orthodontics

Objective: To propose a semi-automated method for pattern classification to predict individuals' stage of growth based on morphologic characteristics that are described in the modified cervical vertebral maturation (CVM) method of Baccetti et al.Materials and Methods: A total of 188 lateral cephalograms were collected, digitized, evaluated manually, and grouped into cervical stages by two expert examiners. Landmarks were located on each image and measured. Three pattern classifiers based on the Naive Bayes algorithm were built and assessed using a software program. the classifier with the greatest accuracy according to the weighted kappa test was considered best.Results: the classifier showed a weighted kappa coefficient of 0.861 +/- 0.020. If an adjacent estimated pre-stage or poststage value was taken to be acceptable, the classifier would show a weighted kappa coefficient of 0.992 +/- 0.019.Conclusion: Results from this study show that the proposed semi-automated pattern classification method can help orthodontists identify the stage of CVM. However, additional studies are needed before this semi-automated classification method for CVM assessment can be implemented in clinical practice. (Angle Orthod. 2012;82:658-662.)