Hand radiograph analysis for fully automatic bone age assessment

This paper describes a method for the fully automatic and reliable segmentation of the bones in a radiograph of the child's hand. The problem consists in identifying the contours of the bones and the difficulty lies in the large variability of the anatomical structures, according to age, hand pose or individual. The model shall not force any standard interpretation, hence we use a simple hierarchical geometric model that provides the only information required for the identification of the chunks of contours. The phalangeal and metacarpal resulting segmentation is proved robust over a set of many hundred of images and measurements of shapes, sizes, areas, ..., are now quite allowed. The next step consists in extending the model for more accurate measurements and also for the localization of the carpal bones.© (1999) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.