Citation

Henriques M, Bonhomme V, Cunha E, Adalian P. Biology (Basel) 2023; 12(2): e206.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publications Institute)

DOI

10.3390/biology12020206

PMID

36829485

PMCID

PMC9952774

Abstract

In this study, we propose a classification method between falls and blows using random forests. In total, 400 anonymized patients presenting with fractures from falls or blows aged between 20 and 49 years old were used. There were 549 types of fractures for 57 bones and 12 anatomical regions observed. We first tested various models according to the sensibility of random forest parameters and their effects on model accuracies. The best model was based on the binary coding of 12 anatomical regions or 28 bones with or without baseline (age and sex). Our method achieved the highest accuracy rate of 83% in the distinction between falls and blows. Our findings pave the way for applications to help forensic experts and archaeologists.

Language: en

Keywords

falls; forensic science; blows; blunt force trauma; CT scan; random forests; skeletal fractures