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Some aspects of the analysis of hand‐wrist bone‐age readings
Author(s) -
Peritz E.,
Sproul A.
Publication year - 1971
Publication title -
american journal of physical anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1096-8644
pISSN - 0002-9483
DOI - 10.1002/ajpa.1330350324
Subject(s) - phalanx , thumb , principal component analysis , anatomy , wrist , mathematics , homogeneous , orthodontics , biology , medicine , combinatorics , statistics
Principal components analysis was applied to the individual center bone‐age readings from the study outlined by Sproul and Peritz ('71) in the preceding paper. The first two components are amenable to a simple interpretation. The first one is a general skeletal maturity factor, which can be expressed as a weighted mean bone‐age, with slightly higher weights attached to the metacarpals and phalanges II to V than to the other bone centers. The second component is a measure of the contrast between hand‐bone and finger‐bone ages, with generally high positive weights for the bone‐ages of radius and carpals, low weights for metacarpals and negative weights for phalanges. The weights for the first component vary little between races and sexes or with children's height. The weights for the second component are less homogeneous. The first component accounts for some two thirds of the variability; the second component accounts for roughly nine percent of it. Mean values for the first two components vary considerably with the children's height. Various other results relating the first two components to height and parents' height are presented. An analysis of the correlation matrices of individual center bone ages revealed particularly high correlations (0.8 to 0.9) within rows, with the exception of thumb bone centers.