Summer J. Decker

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between vertebral margins at individual vertebral levels between T12‐L5 vertebra and chronological age and develop predictive models. Three hundred and nineteen CT scans from a medical imaging database in North America were randomly selected. Three superior and inferior vertebral margin sites were scored based on observable age‐related changes. All individual vertebral margin site scores significantly correlated with age at death with Pearson r values ranging from 0.47 to 0.77. Totaling the individual vertebral margin site scores for L1‐L5 improved Pearson r to 0.92. All resulting predictive models were significant, and the best models predicted age at death within 10 years 70%–76% of the time for males, females, and combined male and females. In conclusion, this study produced accurate and reliable models to predict age at death using age‐related changes in the spine for a North American population.