Display of the elbow image and its change with age.
As children mature their bones ossify (become more calcified). They tend to do this in a set pattern.
Indeed it is a way of aging a skeleton from a plain radiograph but looking carefully at the state of
bone ossification.
In addition we use the changes we are looking at the elbow to insure that, following trauma, there
has not been an injury to the bones or cartilage. This does however mean that you have to
memorise all the changes that occur and be able to relate that to the image in from of you.
We wish to produce a computer based reference, based on a set of original images, from males and
females from 0-18 years with 3 monthly increments. The reference should be able to display the
joint in an AP (anterioposterior) and lateral projection and be interactive in its display.
Having produced this interface we need to test its use through a co-operative study with the
department of orthopaedics (with Mr Giles Patterson). The junior doctors will use the interface and
demonstrate whether it is beneficial in assessing the patients clinically.
We have access to the patient data and access to the clinical staff for this study.
A follow up study would be to produce a model based description of the range of changes that occur
at each age-related time point. Not all children mature at the same rate, and there are racial and sex
related differences in growth. It would be possible to show not only an example of the appearances
that occur at a given age but also the expected range of appearance for each given age-related time
point. This is a more difficult question as it would require image model generation based on images
in two plains and for multiple time points.
Professor Charles E Hutchinson
Professor of Imaging
University of Warwick
+44 (0)24 7696 8667 (int 28667)
c.e.hutchinson@warwick.ac.uk