Sex estimation from Thai hand radiographs using convolutional neural networks

Abstract

Manual analysis of hand radiographs for sex estimation is prone to biases and errors. This study addresses the need for automated methods by exploring the potential of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to accurately identify individual sex from Thai hand radiographs, overcoming limitations in data availability and variable quality. To improve dataset quality, we applied contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE) and Gaussian blur filter techniques to Thai hand radiographs from 385 male and 788 female individuals. We split these images into training, validation, and test sets. We also applied image augmentation techniques to increase the number of radiographs in the training dataset. Seven CNN models were trained, validated, and evaluated on 100 unseen male and female radiographs each. Among these models, the InceptionResNetV2 architecture demonstrated superior performance, achieving an accuracy of 87.50 % and an F1-Score of 86.91 %. Notably, this model utilized information from the 2nd to the 5th metacarpal bone and proximal phalanges in males, and from the 2nd metacarpal bone in females. Our findings provide a solid foundation for sex estimation from Thai hand radiographs, highlighting the power of CNNs in mitigating challenges associated with data quantity and quality. By automating the sex estimation process using CNNs, forensic analysis can benefit from enhanced accuracy and objectivity, enabling faster and more reliable sex assessment. We envisage that future research will build upon these findings to further improve the performance of sex estimation, contributing to advancements in forensic analysis and facilitating more effective utilization of Thai hand radiographs for sex estimation.