Preliminary Radiological Assessment of Age‐related Change in the Trabecular Structure of the HumanOs Pubis*

Abstract

This preliminary study examines correlations between age-at-death and changes in the trabecular architecture of the human os pubis, utilizing continuous, quantitative data from plain film radiography, computed tomography (CT), and micro-CT scans of 65 male innominates. Radiography provides nondestructive options for assessment, digital preservation, and presentation of human skeletal remains; important for forensic and culturally sensitive archaeological materials, which must remain unmodified for opposing experts, future researchers, or repatriation and reburial. Radiographic techniques permit analysis of remains that cannot be disarticulated (e.g., religious proscription, mummies), and trabecular measures provide data where traditional surface indicators are obscured or damaged. Potentially, robust predictive models derived herein achieve R-values of 0.522, 0.447, and 0.731, respectively. Further testing of these methods may validate these techniques as further lines of evidence in age estimation, with the potential to improve on the accuracy of traditional qualitative techniques by providing quantitative, continuous variables in predicting skeletal age-at-death.

CT and micro‐CT analysis of a case of Paget's disease (osteitis deformans) in the Grant skeletal collection

“…Paget's disease is generally indicated macroscopically by the presence of skeletal elements thickened by the deposition of a porous or 'coral-like' periosteal bone (Wells & Woodhouse, 1959;Stirland, 1991;Molleson & Cox, 1993) and investigated further using thin-section microscopy and radiography. The case of Paget's disease here, noted incidentally in a radiographic study of the pubis (Wade, 2008), demonstrates the diagnostic power of CT and micro-CT where biochemistry and bone scans are impossible, particularly as applied to sensitive remains that preclude destructive thin-section microscopy. CT and its higher resolution counterpart micro-CT can image the trabecular micro structures internal to skeletal elements in three dimensions.…”

Forensic age estimation based on the trabecular bone changes of the pelvic bone using post-mortem CT

“…Future research will involve implementing our method and supporting the results with quantitative data. Previous studies have tested quantitative approaches in the quantification of the variation of the trabecular bone in femur [31] and humerus [32] and pubic bone [20]. Trabecular bone changes could be also investigated using the variation of the Hounsfield Units (HU), although particular attention has to be paid to factors such as the position and the dimension of the region of interest, the model and the setting of the CT scanner [33], that can influence the reliability and the reproducibility of any resultant method.…”

“…Computed Tomography (CT) was used to assess the trabecular structure changes on the pubic bone [17], the auricular surface [18] and the proximal epiphysis of the humerus and the femur [19]. Micro-CT scan, CT and X-ray were compared in a quantitative study of the trabecular changes in the pubic bone [20]. However, all these studies analyzed the trabecular bone of dry bones.…”

Technical Note: Reliability of suchey‐brooks and buckberry‐chamberlain methods on 3D visualizations from CT and laser scans

“…Barrier et al (2009), Pasquier et al (1999 and recently Wade et al (2011) focused on the trabecular bone structures. Ferrant et al (2009) used a new approach that considered quantitative criteria such as angles, lengths and heights both on the pubic bone and the auricular surface.…”