Avaliação do AAM - Active Appearance Model para detecção de regiões de interesse em radiografias carpais na estimativa da idade óssea através do método TW

In several areas of health professionals (pediatricians, nutritionists, orthopedists, endocrinologists, dentists, etc.) are used in the assessment of bone age to diagnose growth disorders in children. Through interviews with specialists in diagnostic imaging and research done in the literature, we identified the TW method - Tanner and Whitehouse as the most efficient. Even achieving better results than other methods, it is still not the most used, due to the complexity of their use. This work presents the possibility of automation of this method and therefore that its use more widespread. Also in this work, they are met two important steps in the evaluation of bone age, identification and classification of regions of interest. Even in the radiography in which the positioning of the hands were not suitable for TW method, the identification algorithm of the fingers showed good results. As the use AAM - Active Appearance Models showed good results in the identification of regions of interest even in radiographs with high contrast and brightness variation. It has been shown through appearance, good results in the classification of the epiphysis in their stages of development, being chosen the average epiphysis finger III (middle) to show the performance. The final results show an average percentage of 90% hit and misclassified, it was found that the error went away just one stage of the correct stage.