Schmidt Sven, Koch Beate, Schulz Ronald, Reisinger Walter, Schmeling Andreas
Institut für Rechtsmedizin, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Turmstrasse 21, 10559 Berlin, Germany.
Int J Legal Med. 2007 Jul;121(4):293-6. doi: 10.1007/s00414-007-0165-7. Epub 2007 Mar 31.
Evaluation of hand ossification is a main pillar of radiological age diagnosis in living subjects. In the present study, we comparatively assessed the Greulich-Pyle and Thiemann-Nitz methods for accuracy of age estimation and degree of acceleration in the respective reference populations. For this, the skeletal age of 649 hand X-rays from German subjects aged 1-18 years was determined by both methods. Accuracy of the age estimates was determined based on regression and measures of certainty. In terms of accuracy, both methods seem to be equally well suited for forensic age diagnostics. The degree of acceleration in the reference populations for the two methods was calculated as the mean difference between the estimated skeletal age and the actual age of a test subject. Compared to the Greulich-Pyle population, the Thiemann-Nitz population was accelerated by 0.44 years in both male and female subjects. When an expert opinion is required and one cannot exclude the possibility that the investigated subject may come from a population with a high acceleration status, the Thiemann-Nitz method should preferably be used to prevent overestimation of age.
手部骨化评估是活体放射学年龄诊断的主要支柱。在本研究中，我们比较评估了格吕利希-派尔（Greulich-Pyle）法和蒂曼-尼茨（Thiemann-Nitz）法在各自参考人群中年龄估计的准确性和加速程度。为此，用这两种方法确定了649例1至18岁德国受试者手部X线片的骨骼年龄。年龄估计的准确性基于回归分析和确定性测量来确定。在准确性方面，两种方法似乎同样适用于法医年龄诊断。两种方法参考人群中的加速程度计算为测试对象估计骨骼年龄与实际年龄之间的平均差异。与格吕利希-派尔人群相比，蒂曼-尼茨人群的男性和女性受试者均加速了0.44岁。当需要专家意见且不能排除被调查对象可能来自加速状态较高人群的可能性时，最好使用蒂曼-尼茨法以防止年龄高估。
