Postmortem 3-D reconstruction of skull gunshot injuries

Abstract

BackgroundIn cases of severe decomposition or skeletonization of a corpse after cerebral gun shot injury it is difficult to exactly reconstruct the bullet path in the brain. However, in case of murder or homicide this might become necessary to answer forensic questions such as the ability to move or other actions of the victim. Materials and methodsTherefore a method in terms of three dimensional reconstruction technique was developed by fusing computed tomography scans (CT) of the original skull and magnetic resonance images (MRI) of a normal brain of adequate size. Hereby five cases were investigated. ResultsIn three cases an excellent concordance between the reconstructed bullet trajectory and the autopsy reports was achieved. In one case the original brain was not available for CT-scanning due to previous autopsy. However, the findings were in line with the pathology report. In one case there was a difference of about 1–2cm between the original autopsy description and the reconstructed bullet path. This was due to only a part of the skull being available for image reconstruction. ConclusionThe findings suggest that this method can successfully be applied to adequately reconstruct bullet paths in cases of completely skeletonized skulls, but should carefully be used in cases of incomplete skulls.