The relationship between the observed body mass and the dimensions of femoral head - A hip MRI case study.
- Autores: Laura Pérez Pachón, S. Niinimäki, J.A. Junno, M. Niskanen, J. Niinimäki
- Localización: Revista española de antropología física, ISSN-e 2253-9921, ISSN 1887-2042, Nº. 33, 2012, págs. 1-6
- Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
Body mass reconstruction from postcranial skeletal elements is a common method in Osteology and various fields of Anthropology. As a weight-bearing element, the femoral head is often considered as a relatively straightforward tool for body mass analyses. Mechanical methods explore the relationship between skeletal elements and weight as a stable trait through adulthood. However, gaining and losing mass, especially fat mass, can occur without direct influence on articular dimensions. This study tests how accurate weight estimations can be in living populations with considerable amount of variation in both size and age. In addition we assess whether modern hospital materials and imaging methods could be utilized to improve body size estimations based on the size of skeletal elements. A clinical sample is utilized of 75 individuals (36 males and 39 females) belonging to a population of modern Finns from the Oulu University Hospital records.
Our results clearly demonstrate that lean weights are more tightly associated with femur head size than the observed weights.
