Quantitative measurement of human ageing using computer-aided radiographic texture analysis

Abstract

Studying the process of ageing in humans is dependent on methods for quantitative measurement of the physiological differences between younger and older individuals. Although in many cases the chronological age is used as a measurement of ageing, it provides merely a rough approximation of the actual physiological age of a person. Here, we propose a computer method for measuring the physiological age of the human knee by using quantitative analysis of the radiographic Haralick bone texture. Experiments using longitudinal data from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging show that the radiographic Haralick texture correlates with the chronological age, and that the ageing of the knee as reflected by the tibial anisotropy and measured using the radiographic texture is not linear to the chronological age. The analysis reveals that the bone ages until the person gets to the age of ,40, then stabilises until the age of around 65, from where it continues to age. A period of rapid ageing was also detected around the age of 55. This shows that periods of rapid morphological changes of the knee occur not only during maturation, but also during ageing.

Comprehensive Analysis of Large Sets of Age-Related Physiological Indicators Reveals Rapid Aging around the Age of 55 Years

“…These findings are in agreement with the contention proposed by Ferrucci et al [22], according which human health shifts along a path of distinct states during aging. The results presented here, based on a cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of a large number of physiological and environmental indicators, are also supported by the profile of alteration of human tissues, which shows the same periods of rapid aging around the age of 55 and after the age of 70 years [23]. These findings show that the process of aging might not be driven by the process of accumulation of irreparable damage alone, but that it can also be affected by age-regulating biological mechanisms.…”

Decline of estimated glomerular filtration rate has triphasic changes according to age

“…1,2 Meanwhile, several recent reports have suggested that age-related changes in humans have phasic alterations. [3][4][5][6][7] For example, Lehallier et al 4 measured 2925 plasma proteins from 4263 healthy adults between 18 and 95 years old and found prominent alterations in some of the proteins with three flexions at ages of 34, 60 and 78 years. Herein, we hypothesized that eGFR declines according to age not at a constant rate but with phasic alterations.…”