ABSTRACT
Estimation of postmortem interval （PMI） is very important for judging the nature of cases, restricting the scope of investigation and suspect, which is always the emphasis and difficulty for forensic pathology. Early postmortem interval is the time between 0 and 24 hours after death. Due to the shorter time after the case occurred, precisely estimating early postmortem interval can help solve crimes, which has important significance in forensic medicine. In recent years, series of advanced methods and technologies are used to estimate the early PMI by the internal and overseas scholars who work in the forensic area. This paper reviews the research progress on fluids biochemistry, supravital reactions, metabolomics, imageology and the degradation rule of genetic material to provide a new idea to the study and application for estimation of early PMI.