An Evaluation of the Calce Method for Age Estimation

The Calce method of skeletal age estimation (Am J Phys Anthropol, 148, 2012 and 11) uses the acetabular surface of the os coxa and was developed using 90 individuals from the J.C.B. Grant Skeletal collection. From this collection, pilot tests using a combined sample size of 55 randomized individuals yielded an accuracy of 54.5%. To eliminate the possible issue of variation within the collection, 30 individuals from those that Calce specifically used were assessed by two analysts. Accuracies of 53.3% and 56.7% were obtained, compared with Calce's reported accuracy of 81% (Am J Phys Anthropol, 148, 2012 and 11). This study also used 30 Japanese individuals from the Nagasaki University modern cadaver collection. Due to the high interobserver error (43.3%) and the low accuracies achieved (40% and 46.7%), the Calce method does not perform well on Japanese samples. The low accuracy of this method in general suggests that the trait descriptions should be refined to assist analysts in properly utilizing the method.