The four-minute approach revisited: accelerating MRI-based multi-factorial age estimation

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Forensic Science
• Radiology

Background:

• Accurate age estimation is crucial in forensic and clinical contexts.
• Current MRI-based age estimation methods can be time-consuming.
• Multi-factorial approaches using various anatomical markers show promise.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the feasibility and reliability of multi-factorial age estimation using MRI.
• To investigate the impact of reduced acquisition times on age estimation accuracy.
• To evaluate MRI-based age estimation from hand, wisdom teeth, and clavicles.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective undersampling of MRI data from 34 volunteers using CAIPIRINHA technique.
• Application of automatic and radiological age estimation methods to original and undersampled data.
• Reliability assessment using standard deviation of signed differences, mean signed difference, intra-class correlation, and Bland-Altman analysis.

Main Results:

• Automatic age estimation demonstrated high reliability (SSD < 0.90 years), even with a total acquisition time of 4 minutes (SSD ≈ 0.20 years).
• Radiological age estimation showed high reliability for hand (ICC ≥ 0.96) and teeth (ICC ≥ 0.79) with short acquisition times.
• Clavicle imaging allowed moderate acceleration (TA = 1:25 min, ICC ≥ 0.71).

Conclusions:

• Reliable multi-factorial age estimation is achievable using MRI of the hand, wisdom teeth, and clavicles.
• A total MRI acquisition time of 4 minutes is sufficient for accurate age estimation.
• Reduced scan times enhance the practicality of MRI-based age estimation.