In the FIFA U-17 World Cup, they are doing random MRI scans on players’ wrists to see if they are overage. Already UAE has had a couple of players DQ’ed. How would this technology work? And how precise would it be to determine if a boy is 18 or younger? FWIW, I think players birthdays must be under 17 as of January of this year, although I might be off on that, so many would be 18 already by tournament time.
Well, an MRI might be able to tell you if the growth plates on the end of the long bones have stopped growing or not, which is an indication of physical maturity, but that may take place over a wide range of ages and can’t be used to definitely determine if someone is over or under 18. Also, this can be done with conventional x-ray which is a HECK of a lot cheaper.
Other than that, I got nothing.
An image of the wrist (interesting they are going for MRI - one assumes they are avoiding any radiation - as in the past this was usually a simple X-ray) is used to determine the “skeletal age” of the subject. A birth we have very little development of the wrist bones. As we develop the bones ossify, and only at maturity are all the bones fully formed, at which point the epiphyses close and the skeleton ceases to grow. There is a well accepted relationship between the development of the wrist bones and skeletal age. It isn’t a direct guage of year age. (It isn’t quite like counting the rings.) Children can lead of lag their skeletal age, early puberty for instance will throw things off. The measure has the useful property of being a good predictor of mature height. Knowing a child’s skeletal age, current age, and height it is possible to predict final height to good accuracy. One assumes for the U-17’s they are merely checking that the player is not yet fully mature. For this age group it is probably a reasonable idea.