Magnetic resonance imaging of the medial extremity of the clavicle in forensic bone age determination: a new four-minute approach

Abstract

We conclude that 3T MRI provides high resolution, cross-sectional images of the maturation of the clavicle without ionising radiation in a very short time, allowing more accurate determination of bone age than plain radiography.

CT evaluation of medial clavicular epiphysis as a method of bone age determination in adolescents and young adults

“…We found left/right epiphyseal ossification stage differences in 18 subjects (6%). This figure was reported in the range of 0.4%-20.1% in previous studies (7,8,11,20,21). The rate of left/right difference in our study was comparable to 8.6% reported by Hillewig et al (21) and 8% reported by Franklin et al (14).…”

Forensic Age Estimation in Unaccompanied Minors and Young Living Adults

“…Therefore reference values from dry bone studies should not be applied to assessments based on radiographs. Radiological methods to examine the medial clavicular epiphysis in living individuals are conventional radiography (CR) (Flecker, 1933;Galstaun, 1937;Jit & Kullkarni, 1976;, computed tomography (CT) (Kreitner et al, 1997(Kreitner et al, , 1998Schulz et al, 2005;Schulze et al, 2006;Bassed et al, 2010;Kellinghaus et al, 2010a, b), as well as new approaches using magnet resonance imaging (Schmidt et al, 2007;Hillewig et al, 2011) and ultrasoundsonography (Schulz et al, 2008b;Quirmbach et al, 2009;Schulz et al, 2010). While traditional classification systems differentiate between four stages of clavicle ossification (stage 1: ossification centre not ossified; stage 2: ossification centre ossified, epiphyseal plate not ossified; stage 3: epiphyseal plate partly ossified; stage 4: epiphyseal plate fully ossified), Schmeling et al divided the stage of total epiphyseal fusion into two additional stages (stage 4: epiphyseal plate fully ossified, epiphyseal scar visible; stage 5: epiphyseal plate fully ossified, epiphyseal scar no longer visible).…”

“…Stage 2 was first observed at the age of 15 years, the earliest age at which stage 3 was observed was 16 years, and stage 4 was first observed at the age of 23 years. Very recently Hillewig et al (Hillewig et al, 2011) published a four-minute approach for MRI of the medial clavicular epiphysis in living individuals. In a comparative study using CR, CT and MRI for staging of 15 sternoclavicular joints the ossification stage was in agreement in each of the three imaging methods used in 6 cases (Vieth et al, 2010).…”

Human age estimation combining third molar and skeletal development

“…The latter group includes mainly noninvasive methods based on the degree of ossification of hand wrist bones [28][29][30][31][32][33][34], the medial part of the collar bone [35][36][37][38][39][40][41] and the costal cartilage of the first rib [42,43].…”