Magnetic resonance imaging for forensic age estimation in living children and young adults: a systematic review

Background The use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in forensic age estimation has been explored extensively during the past decade. Objective To synthesize the available MRI data for forensic age estimation in living children and young adults, and to provide a comprehensive overview that can guide age estimation practice and future research. Materials and Methods MEDLINE, Embase and Web of Science were searched. Additionally, cited and citing articles and study registers were searched. Two authors independently selected articles, conducted data extraction, and assessed risk of bias. Study populations including living subjects up to 30 years were considered. Results Fifty-five studies were included in qualitative analysis and 33 in quantitative analysis. Most studies suffered from bias, including relatively small European (Caucasian) populations, varying MR-approaches and varying staging techniques. Therefore, pooling of the age distribution data was not appropriate. Reproducibility of staging was remarkably lower in clavicles than in any other anatomical structure. Age estimation performance was in line with the gold standard, which uses radiographs, with mean absolute errors ranging from 0.85 to 2.0 years. The proportion of correctly classified minors ranged from 65% to 91%. Multi-factorial age estimation performed better than based on a single anatomical site. Conclusion More multi-factorial age estimation studies are necessary, together with studies testing if the MRI data can safely be pooled. The current review results can guide future studies, help medical professionals to decide on the preferred approach for specific cases, and help judicial professionals to interpret the evidential value of age estimation results.

Publication year:2020

BOF-keylabel:yes

IOF-keylabel:yes

BOF-publication weight:1

CSS-citation score:2

Authors:International

Authors from:Higher Education

Accessibility:Open