arXiv:2603.17926cs.CV2026-03被引 1

用锁骨CT扫描精准估测法律年龄,误差仅1.55年。

A practical artificial intelligence framework for legal age estimation using clavicle computed tomography scans

  • 自动检测锁骨并选关键切片,减少人工标注。
  • 模型误差1.55年,优于人类专家和旧方法。
  • 可配置不确定性区间,适合法医决策场景。

法律年龄估测在法医和司法领域至关重要,需具备准确、稳健、可复现且能量化不确定性的方法。尽管已有AI研究多聚焦手部X光或牙科影像,但锁骨计算机断层扫描(CT)因在年龄估测中表现优异却未被充分探索。本文提出一种可解释的多阶段框架,从锁骨CT扫描中进行法律年龄估测:(i) 基于连通域的特征检测法实现自动锁骨定位,几乎无需人工标注;(ii) 采用集成梯度引导的切片选择策略,构建多切片卷积神经网络输入;(iii) 使用置信预测区间支持符合国际标准的不确定性决策。该方法在1,158例公开法医数据库(新墨西哥遗体影像数据库)的全身体CT扫描上评估,最终模型在独立测试集上达到1.55±0.16年的平均绝对误差(MAE),优于人类专家(约1.90年)及先前方法(同数据集下均高于1.75年)。置信预测支持可配置覆盖率,满足法医需求。注意力图显示模型聚焦于内侧锁骨骨骺的解剖相关区域。该方法已作为Skeleton-ID软件(https://skeleton-id.com/skeleton-id/)的一部分上线,旨在作为多因素法医工作流中的决策支持组件。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Legal age estimation plays a critical role in forensic and medico-legal contexts, where decisions must be supported by accurate, robust, and reproducible methods with explicit uncertainty quantification. While prior artificial intelligence (AI)-based approaches have primarily focused on hand radiographs or dental imaging, clavicle computed tomography (CT) scans remain underexplored despite their documented effectiveness for legal age estimation. In this work, we present an interpretable, multi-stage pipeline for legal age estimation from clavicle CT scans. The proposed framework combines (i) a feature-based connected-component method for automatic clavicle detection that requires minimal manual annotation, (ii) an Integrated Gradients-guided slice selection strategy used to construct the input data for a multi-slice convolutional neural network that estimates legal age, and (iii) conformal prediction intervals to support uncertainty-aware decisions in accordance with established international protocols. The pipeline is evaluated on 1,158 full-body post-mortem CT scans from a public forensic dataset (the New Mexico Decedent Image Database). The final model achieves state-of-the-art performance with a mean absolute error (MAE) of 1.55 $\pm$ 0.16 years on a held-out test set, outperforming both human experts (MAE of approximately 1.90 years) and previous methods (MAEs above 1.75 years in our same dataset). Furthermore, conformal prediction enables configurable coverage levels aligned with forensic requirements. Attribution maps indicate that the model focuses on anatomically relevant regions of the medial clavicular epiphysis. The proposed method, which is currently being added as part of the Skeleton-ID software (https://skeleton-id.com/skeleton-id/), is intended as a decision-support component within multi-factorial forensic workflows.

法医年龄估测锁骨CTAI决策支持不确定性量化

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