Automatic Determination of the Greulich-Pyle Bone Age as an Alternative Approach for Chinese Children with Discordant Bone Age

Background: Automated bone age (BA) rating using BoneXpert is being adopted worldwide. This study investigated whether manual matching of hand radiographs could be replaced by BoneXpert for BA ratings of Chinese children with delayed or advanced BA. Methods: 482 left-hand radiographs from 482 children (aged 2-16 years) with discordant BA were evaluated by BoneXpert and manually by 4 radiology residents using the Greulich and Pyle atlas. Radiographs whose BoneXpert BA deviated by >1 year from manual assessment were rerated by 2 attending radiologists in a blinded manner. Results: Among all 482 radiographs, 46 (9.5%) radiographs were rerated and no radiographs were rejected. Differences between BoneXpert and manual rating of 28 (5.8%) cases were >1 year. The manual BAs of the 28 radiographs were all >10 years and greater than the BoneXpert BAs. The root mean square deviation between the residents and BoneXpert was 0.56 for these children (95% CI 0.53-0.61). Conclusion: BoneXpert agreed with manual BA rating in 94.2% of the images. Therefore, BoneXpert could be used as an alternative for the radiology residents to make an initial BA estimation. Modification of BoneXpert should provide greater accuracy for the estimation of BA in children aged >10 years with discordant BA.

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