Bone age

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Bone age is the degree of a person's skeletal development. In children, bone age serves as a measure of physiological maturity and aids in the diagnosis of growth abnormalities, endocrine disorders, and other medical conditions. As a person grows from fetal life through childhood, puberty, and finishes growth as a young adult, the bones of the skeleton change in size and shape. These changes can be seen by x-ray and other imaging techniques. A comparison between the appearance of a patient's bones to a standard set of bone images known to be representative of the average bone shape and size for a given age can be used to assign a "bone age" to the patient. Bone age is distinct from an individual's biological or chronological age, which is the amount of time that has elapsed since birth. Discrepancies between bone age and biological age can be seen in people with stunted growth, where bone age may be less than biological age. Similarly, a bone age that is older than a person's chronological...

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