Dental and skeletal imaging in forensic age estimation : disparities in current approaches and the continuing search for optimization

Medical imaging for forensic age estimation in living adolescents and young adults continues to be controversial and a subject of discussion. Because age estimation based on medical imaging is well studied, it is the current gold standard. However, large disparities exist between the centers conducting age estimation, both between and within countries. This review provides an overview of the most common approaches applied in Europe, with case examples illustrating the differences in imaging modalities, in staging of development, and in statistical processing of the age data. Additionally, the review looks toward the future because several European research groups have intensified studies on age estimation, exploring four strategies for optimization: (1) increasing sample sizes of the reference populations, (2) combining single-site information into multifactorial information, (3) avoiding ionizing radiation, and (4) conducting a fully automated analysis

Carpal Bone Analysis using Geometric and Deep Learning Models

The recent trend for analyzing 3D shapes in medical application has arisen new challenges for a vast amount of research activities. Quantitative shape comparison is a fundamental problem in computer vision, geometry processing and medical imaging. This thesis is motivated by the availability of carpal bone shape dataset to develop efficient techniques for diagnosis of a variety of wrist diseases and examine human skeletal. This study is conducted in two sections. First, we propose a spectral graph wavelet approach for shape analysis of carpal bones of the human wrist. More precisely, we employ spectral graph wavelets to represent the cortical surface of a carpal bone via the spectral geometric analysis of the Laplace-Beltrami operator in the discrete domain. We then propose global spectral graph wavelet (GSGW) descriptor that is isometric invariant, efficient to compute and combines the advantages of both low-pass and band-pass filters. Subsequently, we perform experiments on shapes of the carpal bones of ten women and ten men from a publicly-available database of wrist bones. Using one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and permutation testing, we show through extensive experiments that the proposed GSGW framework gives a much better performance compared to the global point signature (GPS) embedding approach for comparing shapes of the carpal bones across populations. In the second section, we evaluate bone age to assess children’s biological maturity and to diagnose any growth disorders in children. Manual bone age assessment (BAA) methods are timeconsuming and prone to observer variability by even expert radiologists. These drawbacks motivate us for proposing an accurate computerized BAA method based on human wrist bones X-ray images. We also investigate automated BAA methods using state-of-the-art deep learning models that estimate the bone age more accurate than the manual methods by eliminating human observation variations. The presented approaches provide faster assessment process and cost reduction in the hospitals/clinics. The accuracy of our experiments is evaluated using mean absolute error (MAE), and the results demonstrate that exploiting InceptionResNet-V2 model in our architecture achieves higher performance compared to the other used pre-trained models

Artificial Intelligence in Oral Health

This Special Issue is intended to lay the foundation of AI applications focusing on oral health, including general dentistry, periodontology, implantology, oral surgery, oral radiology, orthodontics, and prosthodontics, among others

Musculoskeletal Diseases 2021-2024

This open access book focuses on imaging of the musculoskeletal diseases. Over the last few years, there have been considerable advances in this area, driven by clinical as well as technological developments. The authors are all internationally renowned experts in their field. They are also excellent teachers, and provide didactically outstanding chapters. The book is disease-oriented and covers all relevant imaging modalities, with particular emphasis on magnetic resonance imaging. Important aspects of pediatric imaging are also included. IDKD books are completely re-written every four years. As a result, they offer a comprehensive review of the state of the art in imaging. The book is clearly structured with learning objectives, abstracts, subheadings, tables and take-home points, supported by design elements to help readers easily navigate through the text. As an IDKD book, it is particularly valuable for general radiologists, radiology residents, and interventional radiologists who want to update their diagnostic knowledge, and for clinicians interested in imaging as it relates to their specialty

Musculoskeletal Diseases 2021-2024

This open access book focuses on imaging of the musculoskeletal diseases. Over the last few years, there have been considerable advances in this area, driven by clinical as well as technological developments. The authors are all internationally renowned experts in their field. They are also excellent teachers, and provide didactically outstanding chapters. The book is disease-oriented and covers all relevant imaging modalities, with particular emphasis on magnetic resonance imaging. Important aspects of pediatric imaging are also included. IDKD books are completely re-written every four years. As a result, they offer a comprehensive review of the state of the art in imaging. The book is clearly structured with learning objectives, abstracts, subheadings, tables and take-home points, supported by design elements to help readers easily navigate through the text. As an IDKD book, it is particularly valuable for general radiologists, radiology residents, and interventional radiologists who want to update their diagnostic knowledge, and for clinicians interested in imaging as it relates to their specialty

Pediatric Fractures

This reprint contains original research and review chapters concerning the latest advancements in various topics related to pediatric fractures. Topics include fractures of the face, clavicle, shoulder, elbow, forearm, wrist, pelvis, femur, and tibia; special considerations focus on osteogenesis imperfecta patients; and consideration is also given to general pediatric fracture topics, such as the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, mortality after pediatric trauma, the effects of NSAID and electronic cigarette use, and chapters on epidemiology and physical activity

Systems Radiology and Personalized Medicine

Medicine has evolved into a high level of specialization using the very detailed imaging of organs. This has impressively solved a multitude of acute health-related problems linked to single-organ diseases. Many diseases and pathophysiological processes, however, involve more than one organ. An organ-based approach is challenging when considering disease prevention and caring for elderly patients, or those with systemic chronic diseases or multiple co-morbidities. In addition, medical imaging provides more than a pretty picture. Much of the data are now revealed by quantitating algorithms with or without artificial intelligence. This Special Issue on “Systems Radiology and Personalized Medicine” includes reviews and original studies that show the strengths and weaknesses of structural and functional whole-body imaging for personalized medicine