ACCURACY OF PATIENTS AGE ASSESSMENT FROM FRONTAL CHEST RADIOGRAPHS

Abstract

Background: Chest radiograph interpretation can be aided by knowing the patient's
age. Patients’ age is often assessed by radiologists from costal cartilage calcification assessment of
chest radiographs with anteroposterior views. Objectives: Therefore, we performed this research to
determine the precision of these radiologists in age estimation from CXRs. Methods: Ten radiology
experts were selected to evaluate 3500 chest digital radiography with posterior-anterior images, in
National Institute of Child Health Karachi/JSMU from January 2022 to 2023. The most important
inclusion criteria were selecting normal or nearly normal radiographs in the study. Radiologists were
blind to patients actual age and were requested to determine patient’s age to closest decade from CXR.
The respondents entered their responses in separate Excel spreadsheets. Results: A sum of 3,500
CXRs was interpreted by radiologists, out of which 32.14% CXRs were correctly interpreted
determining age at SD + 3 years, whereas 2375 CXRs were either overrated or underestimated
(p<0.05) and misinterpreted the age of patients (2375/3500; 67.85%). Conclusion: Overall age
assessment from a frontal CXR was only 32.14% in our study; considerable disparities were identified
in age estimation using CXRs. Yet, it would be fascinating to expand this academic endeavor through
artificial intelligence tools and possibly improving the precision of patient age prediction from CXR.
This approach for determining the age will be useful for screening tests in the prospect.