Introduction - Segmentation of Hand Bone for Bone Age Assessment - page 5

Chapter 1

Introduction

Abstract This chapter informs the readers about the background of bone age
assessment of which include the clinical practicality, and the pros and cons of the
conventional methods of this assessment. After that, we explain the automated sys-
tem that is capable of substituting the conventional methods by further elaborating
the pitfalls and constraints of this alternative. Then, we define our objective in this
topic and delimit the discussion scope of this topic follow by stating the contribu-
tions of this topic for the ield in hand bone segmentation. Lastly, we provide the
outline of the topic.

1.1 Introduction

It is not trivial to have a distinct definition to physical maturity, not to mention
an accurate quantitative measurement; conventional stature measurement, which
does not assure common end points, can hardly be used to measure maturity. In
other words, one is not certain about the maturity of a child by his or her chrono-
logical age; for instance, knowing that a child whose height is considered 'tall'
compared to other children at same age does not indicate definitely that the child is
more matured than the other children. Therefore, stature measurement is not suit-
able to measure maturity. However, there are some defined events that are definite
to occur in normal individuals. Those events are suitable to measure the maturity.
Events during puberty throughout adolescence such as eruption of a certain tooth,
occurrence of first menstrual period, degree of testicular and appearance of pubic
hair can be used as indicator for the maturity. It is deducible that an individual that
has undergone a particular event is more matured than the other individuals that
have not undergone the event. Not only limited to the occurrence, but the develop-
ment of the events can further provide strong evidence to the degree of maturity
such as the breast development for girls or the penile development for boys. Such
events are invariably called as developmental 'milestones' to indicate how far an
individual has travelled along the pathway to full maturity.
The utilization of events sequence to measure maturity is not without weak-
nesses. The main weakness is that the events are all not closely spaced [ 1 ]. The