Age estimation based on 3D post-mortem computed tomography images of mandible and femur using convolutional neural networks

Abstract

Age assessment has attracted increasing attention in the field of forensics. However, most existing works are laborious and requires domain-specific knowledge. Modern computing power makes it is possible to leverage massive amounts of data to produce more reliable results. Therefore, it is logical to use automated age estimation approaches to handle large datasets. In this study, a fully automated age prediction approach was proposed by assessing 3D mandible and femur scans using deep learning. A total of 814 post-mortem computed tomography scans from 619 men and 195 women, within the age range of 20–70, were collected from the National Forensic Service in South Korea. Multiple preprocessing steps were applied for each scan to normalize the image and perform intensity correction to create 3D voxels that represent these parts accurately. The accuracy of the proposed method was evaluated by 10-fold cross-validation. The initial cross-validation results illustrated the potential of the proposed method as it achieved a mean absolute error of 5.15 years with a concordance correlation coefficient of 0.80. The proposed approach is likely to be faster and potentially more reliable, which could be used for age assessment in the future.