The most basic consists of a description of the characteristics and abnormalities of particular temporal bones.The 2nd one is the measurement of various structures in a larger set of temporal bones and the monitoring of these structures over time. The height of stapes was measured in a set of 40 temporal bones from 27 fetuses, and the growth of stapes from the 13th to 36th weeks of pregnancy was determined.A computer-assisted nonlinear regression analysis of diagnostics enabling simultaneous examination of data was carried out, a growth curve model proposed and a mathematical method with Ratkowski criteria for estimation applied to find the best descriptive model of the height of stapes versus time y=f(x) growth curve; the results of 13 growth models were examined.
It was found that the maximum growth of the height of stapes was between the 13th and the 24th weeks of pregnancy.