BoneXpert: automated bone age determination

BoneXpert is a software product that computes bone age automatically based using the Greulich-Pyle and the Tanner-Whitehouse systems. It is installed on a PC and can be set up as a "PACS listener" so that the radiographer can send the hand x-ray (as a DICOM file) from PACS to the BoneXpert PC, where the analysis is carried out automatically in 10 seconds. The images then appear on the BoneXpert PC with the patient details and the name of the referring physician.

I haven't tried it myself, but the program can be downloaded from the website. The first five analyses are free. Thereafter, licensing thereafter is on a fee-per-analysis basis, currently 5 Euro per image, with discounts for developing countries. BoneXpert "conforms to the European Community Directive for Medical Devices EC 1993/42, as indicated by the CE mark".

The website also has a list of publications which have been accepted in peer-reviwed journals which suggest that the product has been validated , based on the Greulich-Pyle atlas.

Sounds interesting, and possibly even cost-effective.

Free online software for calculating bone age

I came across this on Sumer Sethi's famous Radiology blog.
http://sumerdoc.blogspot.com/2007/04/bone-age-estimation.html.

I'm not sure if it's easier than flipping through the Greulich and Pyle Atlas, and I've never used the Tanner Whitehouse method. Nor do I know if this method has been validated (I've tried to look in PubMed). But it looks like it might be interesting for people who like this sort of thing.
http://vl.academicdirect.ro/medical_informatics/bone_age/v1.0/

More bone age software, for Mac only, and integrated with Osirix:
http://homepage.mac.com/d2p/radiology/boneage.html

Digital Bone Age Atlas

Our departmental copy of the Greulich and Pyle atlas always seems to go missing, and I had been wondering if a digital version was available. Perhaps someone, somewhere might have scanned it and saved it as a pdf (probably highly illegal).

Then I saw this pocket-sized paperback at the ECR.

Hand Bone Age A Digital Atlas of Skeletal Maturity
V Gilsanz and O Ratib
Springer 2005. Approx 110 pp. 90 illus. With CD-ROM formatted for PC, PDA version for PALM and Pocket PC. Softcover $79.95 ISBN 3-540-20951-4
"This atlas integrates the key morphological features of ossification in the bones of the hand and wrist and provides idealized, sex- and age-specific images of skeletal development. This computer-generated set of images should serve as a reasonable alternative to the reference books currently available".

It is pretty cheap, as far as illustrated medical books go, looks easier to use than the G&P atlas (less text), and I can't see any reason why we shouldn't use it. It does not seem to have appeared on the Sprnger website yet, but a Google search brought out an abstract on this project presented by the authors at RSNA 2003.