Morphometrics using radiographic study of thyroid cartilage for age-estimation in Korean males

Abstract

Aim: To estimate the age at death of Koreans whose age is unknown, based on the radiographic analysis of thyroid cartilage. Methodology: Thyroid cartilage was separated from the larynx and dissected from the surrounding connective tissue. Dedicated mammography was carried out in 124 thyroid cartilage specimens, including 76 males and 48 females. Radiographed films were scanned and 17 quantitative measurements were carried out with Adobe (R) Photoshop (R) CS (version 8.0). These measurements were analyzed using the SPSS (version 22.0) statistical software package. Results: The data were divided into three age groups: G1- age between 15 and 30 years; G2- age between 31 and 45 years; G3- age over 46 years. The discriminant functions for the age group and multiple regression functions for each age group were obtained for the age-estimation of male subjects, but the application for female subjects was still limited due to small sample size for each age group. Interpretation: The study indicates that thyroid cartilage is useful in estimating the age for Korean male subjects, whose age is unknown. Further investigations must be conducted to verify the utility of this method and its application to female subjects.