Korean J Orthod.
2007 Feb;37(1):16-28.
Construction of a reference stature growth curve using spline function and prediction of final stature in Korean
- Affiliations
-
- 1College of Dentistry, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.
- 2Department of Orthodontics, School of Dentistry, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea. nonext@snu.ac.kr
Abstract
OBJECTIVE
Evaluation of individual growth is important in orthodontics. The aim of this study was to develop a convenient software that can evaluate current growth status and predict further growth.
METHODS
Stature data of 2 to 20 year-old Koreans (4893 boys and 4987 girls) were extracted from a nationwide data. Age-sex-specific continuous functions describing percentile growth curves were constructed using natural cubic spline function (NCSF). Then, final stature prediction algorithm was developed and its validity was tested using longitudinal series of stature measurements on randomly selected 200 samples. Various accuracy measurements and analyses of errors between observed and predicted stature using NCSF growth curves were performed.
RESULTS
NCSF growth curves were shown to be excellent models in describing reference percentile stature growth curve over age. The prediction accuracy compared favorably with previous prediction models, even more accurate. The current prediction models gave more accurate results in girls than boys. Although the prediction accuracy was high, the error pattern of the validation data showed that in most cases, there were a lot of residuals with the same sign, suggestive of autocorrelation among them.
CONCLUSION
More sophisticated growth prediction algorithm is warranted to enhance a more appropriate goodness of model fit for individual growth.
