Segmentation of the finger bones as a prerequisite for the determination of bone age

The determination of bone age from a hand and wrist x-ray is an important test in determining the ætiology of short stature in children and teenagers. At present, ageing is achieved by manual comparison of a patient's x-ray against a library of archetypal x-rays. This paper presents an algorithm for segmenting the finger bones in an x-ray, and suggests how features determined from the segmented bones may be used to estimate bone age. The bones' outlines are located using a mix of region- and edge-based techniques, and rely extensively on domain knowledge. © 1994.