TY - JOUR

T1 - A minimum data set approach to post-mortem computed tomography reporting for anthropological biological profiling

AU - Brough, Alison L.

AU - Morgan, Bruno

AU - Robinson, Claire

AU - Black, Sue

AU - Cunningham, Craig

AU - Adams, Catherine

AU - Rutty, Guy N.

PY - 2014/12

Y1 - 2014/12

N2 - Anthropological examination of bones is routinely undertaken in medico-legal investigations to establish an individual’s biological profile, particularly their age. This often requires the removal of soft tissue from bone (de-fleshing), which, especially when dealing with the recently deceased, is a time consuming and invasive procedure. Recent advances in multi-detector computed tomography have made it practical to rapidly acquire high-resolution morphological skeletal information from images of “fleshed” remains. The aim of this study was to develop a short standard form, created from post-mortem computed tomography images, that contains the minimum image-set required to anthropologically assess an individual. The proposed standard forms were created for 31 juvenile forensic cases with known age-at-death, spanning the full age range of the developing human. Five observers independently used this form to estimate age-at-death. All observers estimated age in all cases, and all estimations were within the accepted ranges for traditional anthropological and odontological assessment. This study supports the implementation of this approach in forensic radiological practice.

AB - Anthropological examination of bones is routinely undertaken in medico-legal investigations to establish an individual’s biological profile, particularly their age. This often requires the removal of soft tissue from bone (de-fleshing), which, especially when dealing with the recently deceased, is a time consuming and invasive procedure. Recent advances in multi-detector computed tomography have made it practical to rapidly acquire high-resolution morphological skeletal information from images of “fleshed” remains. The aim of this study was to develop a short standard form, created from post-mortem computed tomography images, that contains the minimum image-set required to anthropologically assess an individual. The proposed standard forms were created for 31 juvenile forensic cases with known age-at-death, spanning the full age range of the developing human. Five observers independently used this form to estimate age-at-death. All observers estimated age in all cases, and all estimations were within the accepted ranges for traditional anthropological and odontological assessment. This study supports the implementation of this approach in forensic radiological practice.

KW - Forensic radiology

KW - Anthropology

KW - Odontology

KW - Computed-tomography

KW - Post-mortem

KW - Identification

U2 - 10.1007/s12024-014-9581-4

DO - 10.1007/s12024-014-9581-4

M3 - Journal article

VL - 10

SP - 504

EP - 512

JO - Forensic Science, Medicine and Pathology

JF - Forensic Science, Medicine and Pathology

SN - 1547-769X

IS - 4

ER -