Virtopsy: One step forward in the field of forensic medicine - A review.

ABSTRACT

Forensic medicine aims for the documentation of medical and other forensic findings in living and deceased persons, for the police and the judiciary system. Though in other branches of the specialty, newer techniques are part of daily routine, in autopsy, the same century old techniques are still being used. Virtopsy is one step ahead in this field which literally means virtual autopsy. New methods like 3D-surface scanning and modern radiological procedures like computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are becoming more and more part of scientific research in forensic sciences and are today part of the routine workflow in a some institutes of legal medicine. This paper is aimed to discuss a few points in the field of Virtopsy.