Forensic Sciences Centre, Instituto Nacional de Medicina Legal, Largo da Sé- Nova, 3000-213 Coimbra, Portugal.
Forensic Sci Int. 2011 Oct 10;212(1-3):276.e1-7. doi: 10.1016/j.forsciint.2011.05.032. Epub 2011 Aug 3.
Age estimation of living individuals has become one of the big issues of forensic anthropology. The increase of children and adolescents with no valid proof of their chronological age is a legal concern to many countries, especially in situations of illegal immigration, sub adult delinquency and juvenile work. For this purpose, the use of radiological methods for evaluation of skeletal maturation is particularly useful. In this study we compare the two of the most common methods applied in age estimation by hand/wrist radiographs: the Radiographic Atlas of Skeletal Development of the Hand and Wrist made by Greulich and Pyle (GP), 1959,and the Sempé method developed for computer--Maturos 4.0 (MT) program. These methods were applied to a sample of 230 radiographs of the hand and wrist from Portuguese children and adolescents of known sex age and age, aged between 12 and 20 years, who performed medical examination at the University of Coimbra Hospitals during 2005. The methods achieved different performances, depending on the age group. Between 12 and 15 years the bone age with the MT program is closer to the chronological age, whereas in older ages the GP Atlas method is more trustworthy. At the ages with legal consequences in Portugal (16 and 18 years) the GP Atlas method is most accurate, namely to decide whether an individual is younger or older than 18 years. Around 16 years old, although there are doubts in relation to the accuracy of both methods, GP Atlas seems to perform better.
对在世个体进行年龄估计已成为法医人类学的重大课题之一。许多国家都对无法提供确切年龄证明的儿童和青少年的年龄问题表示关注，尤其是在非法移民、未成年犯罪和未成年劳动等情况下。为此，利用放射学方法评估骨骼成熟度尤为有用。在本研究中，我们比较了两种最常用于腕骨和手骨放射评估的常用方法：1959 年由 Greulich 和 Pyle 制定的《手部和腕部骨骼发育放射图谱》（GP）和用于计算机的 Sempé 法——Maturos 4.0（MT）程序。这两种方法被应用于 230 例来自葡萄牙的 12 至 20 岁的儿童和青少年的手部和腕部 X 光片，这些人在 2005 年于科英布拉大学附属医院进行了体检。根据不同的年龄组，这两种方法的表现有所不同。在 12 至 15 岁之间，MT 程序的骨龄与实际年龄更为接近，而在年龄较大时，GP 图谱法则更为可靠。在葡萄牙具有法律后果的年龄（16 岁和 18 岁），GP 图谱法最为准确，即决定个体是否小于或大于 18 岁。在 16 岁左右，尽管两种方法的准确性都存在疑问，但 GP 图谱法似乎表现更好。
