Final answer:
The correct term for a professional who can modify and reconstruct images to predict the appearance of a missing child years later is a forensic artist. They use artistry and scientific knowledge to create age-progressed images, assisting in investigations of long-term missing persons.
Step-by-step explanation:
The term that best matches the description of a forensic professional able to modify and reconstruct images of a missing child and predict their appearance twenty years later is a forensic artist.
A forensic artist specializes in creating age-progressed images and facial reconstructions that aid in the identification and location of missing persons.
Employing a blend of artistry and science, these professionals analyze past photographs and consider variables like bone structure, genetics, lifestyle, and environmental factors to render a possible current appearance. Such expertise is pivotal in investigations involving long-term missing persons.
While the role of a forensic anthropologist is crucial in determining the age, sex, race, and height based on skeletal remains, and a forensic pathologist ascertains the cause of death, it is the forensic artist who addresses the visual identification aspects in cases like aged-progressed drawings of missing individuals.