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Brain Imaging in Postmortem Forensic Radiology

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Abstract

The importance of brain postmortem imaging is roughly twofold. Firstly, brain postmortem imaging can assist autopsy in cause of death determination, in personal identification, and in various other forensic tasks. By knowing brain information in advance, pathologists and assistants who would perform irreversible and destructive investigations of the head of cadavers could prepare to search for the lesions suggested by imaging prior to the autopsy. Secondly, postmortem imaging is useful for “triage” of autopsies. In the cranium, there are many fatal lesions and injuries that can be evaluated using postmortem imaging, which has the potential to reduce unnecessary autopsies. At the same time, since postmortem imaging cannot be a perfect substitute for autopsies, there are various pitfalls and limitations for investigating the cause of death based on postmortem imaging. In this chapter, we introduce the main points of postmortem imaging of the brain in the context of these two points. We also describe our recommended protocol and the basic postmortem changes observed in CT to facilitate an accurate understanding of the imaging findings.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forensic Medicine, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Yohsuke Makino & Hirotaro Iwase

  2. Department of Legal Medicine, Graduate School of Medicine, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan

    Yohsuke Makino, Maiko Yoshida, Daisuke Yajima & Hirotaro Iwase

  3. Department of Forensic Medicine, School of Medicine, International University of Health and Welfare, Narita, Japan

    Daisuke Yajima

Authors
  1. Yohsuke Makino
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  2. Maiko Yoshida
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  3. Daisuke Yajima
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  4. Hirotaro Iwase
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yohsuke Makino .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Policlinico Paolo Giaccone Radiology Department, Palermo, Italy

    Giuseppe Lo Re

  2. Department of Health Promotion, Maternal and Child Care, Policlinico Giaccone, Palermo, Italy

    Antonina Argo

  3. Institute of Radiology University Hospital, Palermo, Italy

    Massimo Midiri

  4. Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Milan, Milan, Italy

    Cristina Cattaneo

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Makino, Y., Yoshida, M., Yajima, D., Iwase, H. (2020). Brain Imaging in Postmortem Forensic Radiology. In: Lo Re, G., Argo, A., Midiri, M., Cattaneo, C. (eds) Radiology in Forensic Medicine. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96737-0_28

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96737-0_28

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