Abstract
The computed tomography (CT) technique has attracted much attention as a promising tool for non-invasive diagnosis and examination in the field of forensic science. The purpose of this study is to assess the trend in CT-related forensic studies through bibliometric methods and thus present a holistic idea about the application of CT in the field of forensic science of the past and present. A total of 2084 articles published in the Scopus index journals between 1978 and 2020 were analyzed using VOSviewer 1.6.15. A drastic increase in the number of CT-related articles was noticed in forensic science since the early 2000s. Switzerland, having the most productive institution (University of Zurich) and author (Michael J. Thali), contributed most to the increasing number of publications. Forensic Science International was the top journal, where approximately 12.5% of the articles (261 out of 2084) have been published. CT was frequently used for autopsy and diagnosis purposes, but recently its applicability has expanded to the field of forensic anthropology and personal identification. This research is expected to provide researchers using CT with not only an understanding about past research trends but also an insight about future research topics and potential collaborative opportunities.
Highlights
There has long been an effort to devise non-invasive diagnostic techniques in the fields of medical and forensic sciences
Per the ScopusS document search, a total of 2084 computed tomography (CT)-related articles have been published in the forensic field since the 1970s (Table 1)
A positive annual growth rate (AGR) indicates that the number of publications in a certain year exceeded that of the previous year, and vice versa
Summary
There has long been an effort to devise non-invasive diagnostic techniques in the fields of medical and forensic sciences. With the development of three-dimensional imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) in the late 20th century, forensic imaging has attracted much attention as a new non-invasive diagnostic tool as well as a new subfield of forensic science [2,3]. Forensic imaging using cross-sectional techniques has advantages in that it allows for three-dimensional examination and visualization of complex structures in an easy and interactive way [1,4]. The purpose of this study is to quantitatively assess the trend of CT-related forensic studies through bibliometric methods and present a holistic idea about the application of CT in the field of forensic science of the past and present. Bibliometric studies allow to track the frequencies and trends of scientific publications associated with a specific field/topic and the relationship of citations
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