Radiograph of a hand, used to assess skeletal maturity (bone age).
The hand of a 6-year-old girl with precocious puberty is shown. Although the girl is tall for her chronological age, her bone age is advanced to that of a I 0-year-old, which means that eighty-three per cent of her growth has already taken place. Assessment of her bone age is important since it is used to predict her final height, which, in this case, will be short. The normal ages at which the bone ossification centres develop are shown in brackets.
