Virtopsy is a virtual alternative to a traditional autopsy, conducted with scanning and imaging technology.
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The name is a portmanteau of "virtual" and "autopsy" and is a trademark registered to Richard Dirnhofer (de), the former head of the Institute of Forensic Medicine of the University of Bern, Switzerland.
Some proponents of virtopsy propose to partially or completely replace traditional autopsy with this approach, including its creator.
Dirnhofer has asserted that virtopsy fully satisfies the requirement that medical forensic findings provide “a complete and true picture of the object examined”. Furthermore, virtopsy is said to achieve the objective “that the pathologist’s report should ‘photograph’ with words so that the reader is able to follow his thoughts visually”.
Forensic pathology is a field within which physicians are mainly preoccupied with examining what initially are victims of possible, suspected or obvious violence that ultimately die. Clinical forensic medicine essentially does the same but with living victims; traffic medicine and age determination are applications that are not, strictly speaking, restricted to clinical forensic medicine in that general practitioners, pediatricians, and other specialists also provide services for such requests.
As examinations typically are performed under the legal and task restraints of investigative authorities such as courts, prosecutors, district attorneys or police, there are constraints as to cost, time, objectivity and task specification depending on local law.
The most relevant step is adequately documenting findings. Virtopsy employs imaging methods that are also used in clinical medicine such as computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Also, 3D surface scanning typically used in automotive industry is being employed to integrate body surface documentation with 3D scene or tool scans. The choice of methods is further supplemented with 3D imaging-guided biopsy systems and post mortem angiography.
CT is well suited to show foreign objects, bone and air or gas distribution throughout the body, whereas MRI sequences are strong in detailing organ and soft tissue findings. A comprehensive analysis of both surface and deep tissue findings may require fusion of CT, MRI and 3D surface data.
Resulting data can be archived and reproduced without loss, analysed elsewhere, or distributed to specialists for technically demanding analysis.
Autopsy still produces both different and ancillary findings compared to virtopsy results so that currently, virtopsy is not a generally accepted method to entirely replace autopsies. In fact, the first scientific study detailing the results of comparing postmortem CT scanning with conventional autopsies was conducted by a team from Israel and was published 1994. Their conclusion already had been that single methods were not as useful to maximize on yielding as many findings as possible as the combination of scanning and autopsy were.
The term “Virtobot” is a trademark also registered to Prof. R. Dirnhofer. It describes a multi-functional robotic system.
The Virtangio machine is a device that is trademarked to Prof. R. Dirnhofer and manufactured by Fumedica [1].
Usage of Greek words in the context of examining deaths may not withstand the test of falsification that spearheaded the virtopsy idea to begin with, but, in fact, usage of existing and creation of new neologisms may have to be reconsidered.
The Virtopsy project started as a research project that was initiated at the end of the twentieth century by Prof. Richard Dirnhofer, and now covers both applied methods and research. Virtopsy contains applied research into various methods of high-tech imaging with the goal to introduce them into the practice of forensic pathology.
With Prof. Michael Thali as operative head of the group, the virtopsy research team operates out of the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Zurich, Switzerland since early 2011.
The idea to conduct virtual autopsy is not new. In 2003, the British Museum contacted the University of Bern's Institute of Forensic Medicine in Switzerland for their virtopsy to do autopsy on a 3000-year-old mummy named Nesperennub without compromising the body. While manner of death, cause of death, time of death, identification of deceased and a range of practical and reconstructive applications are obviously related to medicolegal investigation of death, virtopsy methods were ground breaking in that they have established a new high-tech toolbox into both research and practice morphological investigation aspects of modern forensic pathology.
Since virtopsy is non-invasive, it is less traumatic for surviving family members and may not violate religious taboos against violating bodily integrity.
Non-invasive imaging is also conducted in living or surviving subjects, but as that has been the main clinical application of CT and MR imaging to begin with, their use in medicolegal investigation of the living is not as ground breaking as using them for investigation of death. Nevertheless, a number of applications that may be regarded as specific for medicolegal imaging applications in the living have found attraction for virtopsy-derived methods:
The technology currently used for conducting a “virtual autopsy” comprises
The virtopsy idea was generated to yield results along a comprehensive number of performance indicators:
Virtopsy methods have helped to solve a range of cases that would have been difficult or impossible to solve otherwise. While academically, case-reports tend to be looked down on by medical faculty, they can expand the existing experience by significant contributions.
This method offers the following advantages:
The National Research Council in the USA, as part of its proposals for reforms in the forensic sciences, has proposed virtopsy as “Best Practice” for the gathering of forensic evidence [www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/228091.pdf].
In addition, the International Society of Forensic Radiology and Imaging was founded in 2012 with the aim of enabling a continuous exchange of research results among its members and developing quality standards for the techniques employed [2].
A Technical Working Group Forensic Imaging Methods [3] was founded in 2005 by Michael Thali and Richard Dirnhofer. It aims to promote an increasingly internationally standardised approach.
Furthermore, a TTechnical Working Group Postmortem Angiography Methods was founded in 2012 to promote best practice. Under the direction of the University Hospital of Lausanne and comprising nine European institutes of forensic medicine, it is developing reliable, standardized methods and guidelines for conducting and assessing postmortem angiographic examinations [www.postmortem-angio.ch].
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