Analysis of X-Ray Images of Femora for Age at Death Estimation of Skeletal Individuals

This work focuses on an in silico analysis of age specific changes of human femora based on X-ray images. Thereby an alternative technique should be found to support classic anthropological methods for individual age estimation. Overall it is achievable to correlate age-related changes in the bone structure with the individual age. With this new approach it is possible to generate grey levels of digital images of specific bone features and correlate categories of grey level variation with the individual age. This method was applied to selected femora of an excavation site, that originates from the age of the Roman Empire/early migration period (365-416 AD). The obtained ages (grouping in defined classes) were then evaluated with the results of classical anthropological methods by a confusion matrix.