Age estimation at death using pubic bone analysis of a virtual reference sample

Frédéric Savall (1) , Fabrice Hérin (2) , Pierre Antoine Peyron (3) , Daniel Rougé , Eric Baccino (3) , Pauline Saint-Martin (1) , Norbert Telmon (1)

1 AMIS - Anthropologie Moléculaire et Imagerie de Synthèse
2 LEASP - Epidémiologie et analyses en santé publique : risques, maladies chroniques et handicaps
3 CHRU Montpellier - Centre Hospitalier Régional Universitaire [Montpellier]

Age at death estimation is a major part of forensic anthropology, but is often poor in the latter decades of life and should benefit from specific population standards. The aim of this study was to test a virtual reference sample with a uniform age distribution in order to improve the accuracy of age estimation for individuals over 40~years of age. We retrospectively built a random virtual reference sample of pubic symphyses from 1100 clinical cases using computed tomography at two French hospitals; this was compared with a test sample (pubic symphyses from 75 corpses undergoing post-mortem computed tomography at a French forensic department) and with the sample originally used in the Suchey-Brooks (SB) system. Inaccuracy and bias were calculated and the proportions of cases in which the real age fell within~the estimated age \textpm~1 standard deviation were calculated. Compared to using the SB sample, using our French sample resulted in a lower inaccuracy for males over 55~years and bias showed that that for males aged 56 to 70~years were less underestimated. Compared to using the SB sample, using our French sample resulted in a lower inaccuracy for females over 70~years and bias showed that that for females aged 56 and older were less underestimated. This study presents a large data set of pubic symphyseal phases from a French virtual sample that allows for improving age estimation accuracy at death, particularly for individuals over 40~years. This kind of material can be useful to improve the age estimation accuracy in a specific region. However, the reliability remains poor and the variability of pubic symphysis morphology related to bone degeneration seems to be an unavoidable limit of the method.

Mots clés: Humans; Reproducibility of Results; Female; Male; Retrospective Studies; Adolescent; Adult; Aged; Middle Aged; 80 and over; Young Adult; France; Imaging; Three-Dimensional; Multidetector Computed Tomography; Computed tomography; Age at death; Age Determination by Skeleton; Bayes Theorem; Forensic anthropology; French; Pubic Symphysis; Reference sample

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Frédéric Savall, Fabrice Hérin, Pierre Antoine Peyron, Daniel Rougé, Eric Baccino, et al.. Age estimation at death using pubic bone analysis of a virtual reference sample. International Journal of Legal Medicine, 2018, 132 (2), pp.609--615. ⟨10.1007/s00414-017-1656-9⟩. ⟨hal-02345562⟩