An easy-to-use TW3 system for assessing bone age

Precise and effective bone age assessment is important for pediatricians to diagnose children with endocrinological problems and growth disorders. The Tanner and Whitehouse III (TW3) method for determining bone age involves detailed shape analyses of several bones of interest and assigning corresponding scores, but the complexity and time-consuming nature make it hard to apply in clinic. Therefore, our project is to develop an easy-to-use graphical user interface which can automatically localize and segment the phalanx region of interests (PROIs) and the epiphyseal/metaphyseal region of interests (EMROIs) of the left-hand radiogram, and then a TW3 scoring system is provided to the user to make a decision. Based on this system, a set of image processing procedures was proposed for the segmentation of PROIs and EMROIs, and then 8 EMORIs were consecutively popped up for the evaluation of TW3 scores. Subsequently, each score of 8 EMROIs was accumulated automatically until the operations were completed. We believed that the easy-to-use TW3 system serves a better operational tool for the pediatricians.