Identification from chest x-rays: reliability of bone density patterns of the humerus.
A critical review of Kahana and Hiss' study on identification from bone trabecular pattern and a test of their method conducted on the humerus are presented. Bone trabecular pattern was studied through the generation of a numerical file representing the gray scale. Using the correlation coefficient, several pairwise comparisons between numerical files were performed. The test gave nearly 30% of incorrect exclusions (the method did not recognize couples of radiographs belonging to the same subject) and 50% of misidentifications (the method recognized couples of radiographs belonging to different subjects, as belonging to the same subject); therefore, this research shows that at the present time, it is not possible to safely quantify identification through bone density patterns, of the proximal humerus taken from thoracic X-rays. Thus, an "easy"-but dangerous-use of trabecular density patterns on this specific type of radiogram as an identification method should be currently avoided.
Labanof, Istituto di Medicina Legale, University of Milan, Via Mangiagalli 37, 20133 Milano, Italy. ciaffi@med.uniroma2.it
Romina
R
Ciaffi
Danilo
D
De Angelis
Pier Federico
PF
Gherardini
Giovanni
G
Arcudi
Renato
R
Nessi
Gian Paolo
GP
Cornalba
Marco
M
Grandi
Cristina
C
Cattaneo
D015519:Bone Density; D018732:Forensic Anthropology / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D006811:Humerus / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D013902:Radiography, Thoracic; D012984:Software