Morphometric Comparison of Clavicle Outlines from 3D Bone Scans and 2D Chest Radiographs: A Shortlisting Tool to Assist Radiographic Identification of Human Skeletons†
Corresponding Author
Carl N. Stephan Ph.D.
Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, Central Identification Laboratory, 310 Worchester Avenue, Building 45, Hickam Air Force Base, HI, 96853
Additional information and reprint requests:
Carl N. Stephan, Ph.D.
School of Biomedical Sciences
The University of Queensland
St Lucia, Qld 4072, Australia
E-mail: [email protected]
Search for more papers by this authorBrett Amidan M.Sc.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 902 Battelle Boulevard, Richland, WA, 99352
Search for more papers by this authorHarold Trease M.Sc.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 902 Battelle Boulevard, Richland, WA, 99352
Search for more papers by this authorPierre Guyomarc'h Ph.D.
Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, Central Identification Laboratory, 310 Worchester Avenue, Building 45, Hickam Air Force Base, HI, 96853
Search for more papers by this authorTrenton Pulsipher M.Sc.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 902 Battelle Boulevard, Richland, WA, 99352
Search for more papers by this authorJohn E. Byrd Ph.D.
Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, Central Identification Laboratory, 310 Worchester Avenue, Building 45, Hickam Air Force Base, HI, 96853
Search for more papers by this authorCorresponding Author
Carl N. Stephan Ph.D.
Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, Central Identification Laboratory, 310 Worchester Avenue, Building 45, Hickam Air Force Base, HI, 96853
Additional information and reprint requests:
Carl N. Stephan, Ph.D.
School of Biomedical Sciences
The University of Queensland
St Lucia, Qld 4072, Australia
E-mail: [email protected]
Search for more papers by this authorBrett Amidan M.Sc.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 902 Battelle Boulevard, Richland, WA, 99352
Search for more papers by this authorHarold Trease M.Sc.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 902 Battelle Boulevard, Richland, WA, 99352
Search for more papers by this authorPierre Guyomarc'h Ph.D.
Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, Central Identification Laboratory, 310 Worchester Avenue, Building 45, Hickam Air Force Base, HI, 96853
Search for more papers by this authorTrenton Pulsipher M.Sc.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 902 Battelle Boulevard, Richland, WA, 99352
Search for more papers by this authorJohn E. Byrd Ph.D.
Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, Central Identification Laboratory, 310 Worchester Avenue, Building 45, Hickam Air Force Base, HI, 96853
Search for more papers by this authorPresented in part at the 65th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, February 18–23, 2013, in Washington, DC.
Supported in part by two appointments to the Postgraduate Research Participation Program at the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command-Central Identification Laboratory, administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education through an interagency agreement between the U.S. Department of Energy and the JPAC-CIL.
The views and opinions contained herein are solely those of the authors and are not to be construed as official, or as views of the U.S. Department of Defense and ⁄ or any of the U.S. Armed Forces.
Abstract
This paper describes a computerized clavicle identification system primarily designed to resolve the identities of unaccounted-for U.S. soldiers who fought in the Korean War. Elliptical Fourier analysis is used to quantify the clavicle outline shape from skeletons and postero-anterior antemortem chest radiographs to rank individuals in terms of metric distance. Similar to leading fingerprint identification systems, shortlists of the top matching candidates are extracted for subsequent human visual assessment. Two independent tests of the computerized system using 17 field-recovered skeletons and 409 chest radiographs demonstrate that true-positive matches are captured within the top 5% of the sample 75% of the time. These results are outstanding given the eroded state of some field-recovered skeletons and the faintness of the 1950's photofluorographs. These methods enhance the capability to resolve several hundred cold cases for which little circumstantial information exists and current DNA and dental record technologies cannot be applied.
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