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Agreement of Tracing and Direct Viewing Techniques for Cervical Vertebral Maturation Assessment
Objective:
This study aimed to evaluate agreement among three methods for cervical vertebral maturation (CVM) assessment, comprising direct viewing, tracing only, and tracing with digitized points.
Material And Method:
Two examiners received training and tests of reliability with each CVM method before evaluation of agreement among methods. The subjects were 96 female-cleft lateral cephalometric radiographs (films of eight subjects for each age ranged from seven to 18 years). The examiners interpreted CVM stages of the subjects with four-week interval between uses of each method.
Results:
The range of weighted kappa values for paired comparisons among the three methods were: 0.96-0.98 for direct viewing and tracing only comparison; 0.93-0.94 for direct viewing and tracing with digitized points comparison; and 0.96-0.97 for tracing only and tracing with digitized points comparison. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) value among the three methods was 0.95. These results indicated very good agreement among methods.
Conclusion:
Use of direct viewing is suitable for CVM assessment without spending more time for tracing. However, the three methods might be used interchangeably.
