Age Estimation

This paper presents a deep learning approach for age estimation of human beings using their facial images. The different racial groups based on skin colour have been incorporated in the annotations of the images in the dataset, while ensuring an adequate distribution of subjects across the racial groups so as to achieve an accurate Automatic Facial Age Estimation (AFAE). The principle of transfer learning is applied to the ResNet50 Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) initially pretrained for the task of object classification and finetuning it’s hyperparameters to propose an AFAE system that can be used to automate ages of humans across multiple racial groups. The mean absolute error of 4.25 years is obtained at the end of the research which proved the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method.

Objective. To determine whether physicians can estimate accurately the age of an accidental bruise on direct physical examination. Methods. Children who presented to the emergency department of a children’s hospital with accidental bruises of known age and origin had demographic data and information about their injury recorded. History-blinded emergency pediatricians, other physicians, and trainees (fellows, residents, and medical students) independently examined the bruised area and recorded injury characteristics and age estimation and ranked characteristics that influenced their estimation. Results. Fifty children with accidental bruises were enrolled. Emergency pediatricians’ accuracy of age estimation within 24 hours of actual age was 47.6%. Individual emergency pediatrician’s accuracy ranged from 0% to 100%, and the interobserver reliability was poor (κ = −0.03). Accuracy within 24 hours of actual age was 29.4% for other physicians and 36.8% for trainees, which was similar to ...

Reconstruction based on the presence of lateral moraines and other relict periglacial features in Upper Alak- nanda basin indicates three phases of glaciation dur- ing the Late Quaternary. From oldest to youngest, they are named as Alaknanda (Stage-I), Alkapuri (Stage-II) and Satopanth (Stage-III) glacial advances. The oldest Stage-I was the most extensive glaciation in the basin that reached south of

Using a neural convolution network, this research presents an automatic system for recognising age and gender based on a person's face. In recent years, one of the most effective research subjects has been collecting information from a person's face. The human face has facial features such as eyes, ears, nose, chin, and other aspects that can be examined based on our requirements. The detection of age and gender begins with facial recognition. Detection is the process of identifying many features based on a single input. Our system makes use of OpenCV and includes a few deep convolutional emotional networks that have been trained to detect faces from inserted images and predict their age and gender using either a webcam or an image. Not only are deep neural convolutional networks costly, but they are also difficult to implement.

Within the area of forensics it would be of great help, both for identifications and in crime scene investigations, to be able to do an age estimate on humans simply on the basis of for instance bloodstains. Telomeres, that constitute the ends of human chromosomes, shorten with every cell division. Thus, telomere length might be used as an indicator of

ABSTRACT Aim We purpose in this paper to precise the reliability of femoral and tibial lengths measurement on bi and three dimensional computed tomography reconstructions in fetal age estimation. We also compare the obtained results to determine which type of reconstruction is most reliable in terms of fetal age estimation. Materiel and methods Thirty-six female fetuses between 24 and 48 weeks of gestational age were included in our study. All selected fetuses were considered as normal. We realize for all fetuses a transverse computed tomography (CT) slices of 0.2 mm. Amira 4.0 program was used to generate bi- and three-dimensional CT reconstructions (2D/3D). We measure, respectively on 2D and 3D CT reconstruction, femoral and tibial lengths. We made a comparison between the results obtained by every type of realized reconstruction (2D or 3D). Results The difference between measures made in 3D and in 2D CT reconstructions is minor (0.87–1.38 mm). This difference is not statistically significant. It exist a good correlation between the measurements taken in 3D and in 2D CT reconstructions (correlation coefficient varies between 0.991 and 0.996). There is an excellent correlation between estimated age using Adalian and al formula and chronological age (correlation coefficient varies between 0.944 and 0.965). The application of Wilcoxon test shows that the median of difference does not exceed in absolute value 1.52 week of gestational age. Conclusion Fetal age estimation can be made using 2D or 3D CT reconstruction. However, in practice, taking measures in 3D CT reconstruction is easier by offering a good image for bone studying.

Abstract:  A great deal has previously been written about the use of skeletal morphological changes in estimating ages-at-death. This article looks in particular at the pubic symphysis, as it was historically one of the first regions to be described in the literature on age estimation. Despite the lengthy history, the value of the pubic symphysis in estimating ages and in providing evidence for putative identifications remains unclear. This lack of clarity primarily stems from the fact that rather ad hoc statistical methods have been applied in previous studies. This article presents a statistical analysis of a large data set (n = 1766) of pubic symphyseal scores from multiple contexts, including anatomical collections, war dead, and victims of genocide. The emphasis is in finding statistical methods that will have the correct “coverage.”“Coverage” means that if a method has a stated coverage of 50%, then approximately 50% of the individuals in a particular pubic symphyseal stage should have ages that are between the stated age limits, and that approximately 25% should be below the bottom age limit and 25% above the top age limit. In a number of applications it is shown that if an appropriate prior age-at-death distribution is used, then “transition analysis” will provide accurate “coverages,” while percentile methods, range methods, and means (±standard deviations) will not. Even in cases where there are significant differences in the mean ages-to-transition between populations, the effects on the stated age limits for particular “coverages” are minimal. As a consequence, more emphasis needs to be placed on collecting data on age changes in large samples, rather than focusing on the possibility of inter-population variation in rates of aging.

The task of estimating the age of humans from their facial image is a challenging one due to the non-linear and personalized pattern of aging differing from one individual to another. This work investigates the problem of estimating the age of humans based on the presented facial image with improved estimation accuracy. The aim in this research is to develop an algorithm and subsequently a framework that helps estimate, to a reasonable degree of accuracy, the age of humans within the ages of 13 years and 40 years from their facial images.
In the proposed GroupWise (GW) age-ranking approach, a reference image set was constructed by grouping images according to ages and using this to obtain age-ranks for each age group in the reference set. Input test/training images were first preprocessed and their LBP features were extracted. Thereafter, using the reference images together with their age-ranks, transformed LBP features called age-rank-biased LBP features were obtained; these features were used with attached age-ranks to train an age estimating function and subsequently to predict the ages of test images. The GroupWise ranking approach is similar to but different from the listwise ranking approach used in Information Retrieval and to the best of our knowledge, this is the first research in age estimation that employs group-wise ranking.
In the experiments, the proposed GW age-ranking approach was tested on a locally obtained dataset (FAGE) and the standard dataset (FG-NET) using standard statistical validation protocols (folded cross validation, leave-one-person-out (LOPO) and independent test) in order to allow for justifiable comparison with existing works. On FAGE, the lowest Mean Absolute Errors (MAE) of 0.7 years was obtained using 10-fold cross validation and the highest being 4.59 years using an independent test set with incorrect ranks. On FG-NET, the MAEs using LOPO were 1.00 years (when images were ranked fairly accurately) and 2.34 years (when images were incorrectly ranked); using an independent image test, MAE of 1.74 years and 6.25 years were obtained on correctly and incorrectly ranked images respectively.
From observations, the proposed approach obtains the lower error rates on independent test sets when the image ranks were predicted fairly accurately and vice versa. An extensive comparative analysis with existing state-of-the-art age estimation approaches indicates that this work obtains the best performance on FG-NET, to the best of our knowledge. With the improvement on the estimation accuracy of facial age estimation obtained in this work, we recommend the applicability of age estimation algorithms in real-world application domains such as Security and Surveillance Monitoring and Age-Specific Human Computer Interaction. With the proposed approach, age-estimation can further be explored on poor quality video images and over a larger class of ages.

In the central sector of the Main Ethiopian Rift, the Ziway–Shala lake basin system includes four present-day residual lakes, from north to south, lakes Ziway, Langano, Abijata, and Shala. This region of East Africa is under the influence of the Intertropical Convergence Zone seasonal migration. Thus it has been designated as a potential core site by the ERICA Project (`Environmental Research for Intertropical Climate in Africa'). The four lakes have been subjected to strong changes in water level and water salinity at least during the Late Pleistocene. The purpose of this study is to produce a model of basin formation and sediment accumulation for this system of lakes, in order to separate the effects of climatic change from environmental variations induced by local or regional factors such as volcano-tectonic forcings. In addition to an exhaustive synthesis of available data, various investigations have been used to develop this model: 3D remote sensing, high-resolution seismics, coring, and structural, sedimentological, and hydrological field studies. New AMS radiocarbon dating helped to refine the pre-existing stratigraphic framework for this region, and basin age estimations were calculated using mean sediment accumulation rates. The history of the Ziway–Shala lake basin system has been reconstructed from the Late Pliocene–Early Pleistocene period (106 yr), mainly characterized by catastrophic explosive volcanic eruptions. The early-middle Pleistocene–Late Pleistocene period (104–106 yr) was marked by a regional volcano-tectonic paroxysm, resulting in major changes in the morphology of the area, with the formation of the Abijata, Ziway and Shala lake basins. From ∼0.20 Ma, the Ziway–Shala basin history is marked by the eastward migration of volcano-tectonic activity, resulting in the development of the youngest basin of the Ziway–Shala system, the Langano Basin. The joint history of sedimentation in the Ziway, Langano, Abijata, and Shala lake basins started during the early-Late Pleistocene period (101–104 yr) and is characterized from this period up to the present-day by a series of climatically controlled rises and falls of lake level.

The aims of this study were to test the accuracy of Cameriere et al.'s European formula on a sample of North German children based on dental age (DA) for chronological age (CA) assessment and to adapt the formula used, in case of regional peculiarities of this group of children. Orthopantomograms of 1000 children (444 males and 556 females) aged 5–16 years were used. The roots of seven left mandibular teeth were evaluated. The number of teeth with complete root development (N zero (0)) was counted. Teeth with incomplete root development were examined and the distance between the inner sides of the open apex was measured and normalized by dividing it by the tooth length to avoid error due to magnification. Cameriere et al.'s European formula underestimated the mean CA of boys by 0.56 AE 1.04 years and of girls by À0.32 AE 0.96. The results of the regression analysis showed that sex (g), the sum of normalized open apices (s), number of teeth with closed apices (N0) and the first-order interaction between the normalized apex width of the canine (x3) and N0 contributed significantly to the fit. All previously mentioned factors were included in the regression model, yielding to the following formula: DA = 9.829 + 0.632 N0 À 1.037s + 0.686 g À 1.582N0 Â x3, where g is a variable: 1 for males and 0 for females. The adapted formula explained 84.1% of the total deviance, with a median age of 0.070 years and 1.185 years interquartile range, (IQR).

Hominin presence is well documented in a number of Early Pleistocene and early Middle Pleistocene European localities. However, the evidence currently available indicates that Acheulean handaxes spread in the fluvial basins of Western Europe during MIS 11, ∼400 kyr ago, associated with Homo heidelbergensis, although a number of early Middle Pleistocene Acheulean assemblages have been dated from MIS 16 onwards. For this reason, the magnetostratigraphic dating in Southeast Spain of two archaeological localities, the open-air site of Solana del Zamborino (SZ) and the rock-shelter site of Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Quípar (EQ), that put back the appearance of handaxes to the Early-Middle Pleistocene limit (Scott and Gibert, 2009) is of particular interest, as the new ages suggest that H. heidelbergensis was a contemporary of H. antecessor that had the ability to produce Levallois debitage and to control fire during the Early-Middle Pleistocene transition. However, we have detected a number of errors in the interpretation of the archaeological assemblage from the first site as well as striking discrepancies with the original faunal lists published for both localities, with several large mammal species that are omitted or arbitrarily changed to make the assemblages consistent with the new ages deduced from magnetostratigraphy. For this reason, we suggest that: (1) the finding of reverse polarity in the sediments sampled for paleomagnetism in SZ may simply record one of the polarity reversals that took place during the Brunhes Chron, although the use by Scott and Gibert (2009) of a composite stratigraphic column precludes correlating these levels with a specific reversal; and (2) the fauna and tools of EQ correspond to the late Middle Pleistocene sedimentary infillings of this karst site, while the samples taken for paleomagnetism belong to a previous sedimentary cycle during the Matuyama Chron. Such interpretations would be in better agreement with the age estimates provided by biostratigraphy and also with the currently accepted chronology for the appearance of Acheulean industries in Western Europe.► The chronology of the earliest Acheulean in Southeast Spain is discussed. ► The magnetostratigraphic evidence for two archaeological localities is re-evaluated. ► The taxonomic affinities of the mammal species identified are discussed. ► We suggest a late Middle Pleistocene age for both localities.

New field observations and sedimentological analyses of the dinosaur-bearing Upper Cretaceous Iren Dabasu Formation in the Iren Nor region of Inner Mongolia (People's Republic of China) have led to a better understanding of its palaeoenvironment. The fluvial deposits represent a braided river that, due to the large amount of fines, does not fit the classical model for braided rivers. The study area is divided into two parts: in the northern part, sediments of the main channel belt of the ancient braided river system are exposed along a dry river valley on the northern edge of the Iren Nor salt lake, while in the southern part, comprising all other studied exposures, different facies of the ancient floodplain are represented, including minor channels, temporary ponds, and palaeosols. The difference between the northern and southern parts is also reflected in the fossil content; only the southern exposures have yielded dinosaur remains. The ancient braided river had a broad, vegetated floodplain populated by a diverse dinosaur fauna. Four species of charophytes are described and illustrated from the Iren Nor site, together with eight species of ostracods, one of which (Cypridea irennorensis sp. nov.) is new. Contrary to the vertebrate data, both groups of microfossils indicate a latest Cretaceous age (Campanian–Maastrichtian) for the Iren Dabasu Formation, and suggest a possible correlation with the Nemegt Formation, which would allow the age estimation to be refined to latest Campanian–Early Maastrichtian.

This study investigates skeletal maturation and sexual dimorphism in the human clavicle in the American population. Specifically, traditional methods of age and sex estimation were compared to novel approaches. Transition analysis, or probit regression, was used to study secular trends in epiphyseal union of the medial clavicle. A Bayesian approach was used to develop age-at-fusion ranges that are less sensitive to the effects of developmental outliers and age mimicry. Linear regression was used to evaluate the sexing accuracy of three commonly-used clavicular measurements and six newly developed measurements. Additionally, a statistical clavicle atlas was used to explore size and shape dimorphism. For the epiphyseal union study, clavicles from 1,289 individuals from cohorts spanning the 20th century were scored with two scoring systems. A simple 3-phase scoring system proved the least subjective, while retaining accuracy levels.
Significant secular trends were apparent in the onset of skeletal maturation, with modern Americans transitioning to fusion approximately 4 years earlier than early 20th century Americans and 3.5 years earlier than Korean War era Americans. Consequently, the secular trend towards earlier maturation appears to have occurred primarily during the latter half of the 20th century. These results underscore the importance of using modern standards to estimate age in modern individuals. For the sexual dimorphism study, all analyses were performed on three dimensional models of CT scanned clavicles. Linear discriminant analysis was performed on nine computer-automated measurements from 1,414 clavicle models. Cross-validated accuracy rates of the best models hovered around 92%. Two new measurements of the lateral end proved to be useful sex estimators, whereas accuracy rates from the medial end were low.
Additionally, sex-specific statistical atlases were used to visualize areas of highest dimorphism. A statistical treatment combining Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and Fisher's Discriminant Ratio (FDR) showed high magnitudes of curvature difference between males and females, particularly in the anterior and superior curvature of the midshaft and the posteriorly oriented curvature of the lateral end. The areas highlighted by the PCA-FDR method show promise as new sexing criteria for the human clavicle.

Adult age-at-death is presented in a number of different ways by anthropologists. Ordinal categories predominate in osteoarchaeology, but do not reflect individual variation in ageing, with too many adults being classified as "middle adults". In addition, mean ages (derived from reference samples) are overly-relied upon when developing and testing methods. In both cases, "age mimicry" is not adequately accounted for. To highlight the many inherent biases created when developing, testing and applying age-estimation methods without fully considering the impact of "age mimicry" and individual variation. The paper draws on previously published research (Web of Science, Pub Med, Google Scholar) on age estimation methods and their use in anthropology. There is a lack of consistency in the methods used to estimate age and for the mode of combining them. Ordinal categories are frequently used in osteoarchaeology, whereas forensic anthropologists are more likely...