M-CNN-RF: A hybrid deep learning model for accurate pediatric skeletal age estimation using hand bone radiographs

Precise and accurate skeletal age estimation using medical imaging is a pivotal and challenging task in the healthcare sector, particularly for identifying potential bone growth issues in infants and newborns. Therefore, this study addresses the pervasive challenges associated with assessing bone abnormalities in pediatric patients, including injuries and infections. Given the importance of early and precise detection of skeletal development, a novel hybrid model is proposed that integrates a modified convolutional neural network (M-CNN) with a robust machine learning (ML) model, specifically random forest (RF), resulting in the M-CNN-RF framework. This model is designed to enhance pediatric bone health assessment by providing an effective method for skeletal age estimation. The M-CNN-RF model is tailored to accurately evaluate hand bone maturation, overcoming the inherent difficulties in skeletal age assessment. The model utilizes the bone age dataset from the Radiological Society of North America that includes 14,236 left-hand radiological images, focusing on the development of a robust model for a precise evaluation based on hand skeleton guidelines. In addition, to enhance the prediction and generalization of the model, data augmentation techniques were employed to increase the size of the dataset. The M-CNN-RF exhibits exceptional performance using numerous performance measures, achieving an accuracy of 97% and precision and recall exceeding 94%. In addition, the model reaches an F1 score of 97%, highlighting the ability of the model to ensure a balance between precision and recall. Furthermore, low mean absolute error (MAE) and mean square error (MSE) values of 0.0141 and 0.0327, respectively, were computed for the proposed model, which demonstrates its notable efficacy in predicting skeletal age. The findings of this study not only contribute valuable information for clinical applications but also underscore the potential of the adopted approach to address the challenges associated with pediatric bone health assessment.