Study of Skeletal Remains: Solving a Homicide Case with Forensic Anthropology and Review of the Literature

Abstract

The present study examines a case in which signs of incised wounds were found on skeletal remains of a murder victim. The authors have studied the skeletal remains and the dynamics of the murder in order to reconstruct the kind of weapon utilized. The bones examined belonged to a woman that had disappeared from almost 10 years and where recovered from the garden of the house belonging to her former partner. The main feature of these remains was the discovery of a damage of a thoracic vertebra (T1). Our examination has the objective to enhance the macroscopic analysis of the skeletal remains in order to deduce information about the classification of specific damages and the dynamics that have caused them and the identification of the weapon that had been used. Highly decomposed bodies, as in skeletal remains, having poor or absent biological tissue on it, challenge the operator to classify the exact nature of the damage, and in some cases, it does not allow achieving a significant level of certainty. In order to solve this critical situation, Forensic Anthropology may contribute greatly by supplying a great amount of information that would not be deciphered otherwise. The bone, main study object of the Forensic Anthropology, may also register, as the soft tissues, the features of the damaging pattern. The opportunity to extrapolate this kind of data, allows analysing the dynamics and the nature of the kind of weapon used. In certain cases the incised bone present also features that allow to identify the exact structure of the weapon: of course, not every wound damages the bone, but when this actually happens, the morphological appearance of the instrument utilized remains crystallized in time, excluding of course the cases in which the bones are destroyed. Many other studies, concerning the characterization of lesions due to sharp objects, have been done and a review of related literature has been included in this article. The major goal of the authors is to highlight the importance of the information that can be extrapolated: the usefulness of the classification of the weapons used to provoke the lesion, could reach a more accurate evaluation in order to significantly help in case of forensic assessment.

Preparing computed tomography images for machine learning in forensic and virtual anthropology

“…Further, collections of high-resolution post-mortem and clinical CT databases eliminates the need for bone preparation, the deterioration of physical samples over time, and allows for easy data sharing and distribution for rapid analysis [ 28 , 44 ]. The virtual nature of CT and its associated imaging modalities allows access where physical examination is impossible [ 45 , 46 ]. The virtual access also provides users with the opportunity to engage in transnational research and analysis, with virtual reconstructions being analysed between institutions in different geolocations [ 27 ].…”

“…This is typically done through the conversion of DICOM data into a surface model, an STL (stereolithography) file. With the success of machine learning techniques in analysing nonmedical images [ 51 ], there is currently a rise in number of studies which utilise machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence on biological profile estimations in FA [ 14 , 16 , 17 , 46 , 52 , 53 , [53] , [53] , [54] , [55] , [56] , [57] , [58] , [59] , [60] , [61] , [62] , [63] , [64] , [65] ]. ML studies in medicine and FA have shown that 3D image files restructured from DICOM images such as Neuroimaging Informatics Technology Initiative (NIfTI), Wavefront Alias (OBJ), and STL is gaining interest and may be a valuable file format for convolutional neural networks in processing volumetric data [ 66 ].…”

İnsan İskeletlerinde Travma: Travmaya Bağlı Ölüm Nedeni Üzerine Bir Araştırma

“…Öldükten uzun zaman sonra ve/veya çevresel faktörlere bağlı olarak cesetler, yumuşak doku ve iç organları çürümüş, yanmış, mumyalaşmış, sabunlaşmış, iskeletleşmeye yüz tutmuş veya tamamen iskeletleşmiş durumda bulunabilmektedir. Bu tür vakalarda adli antropoloji bilimi metot ve teknikleri kullanılarak teşhis edilemez ve otopsi yapılamaz hale gelmiş cesetlerin biyolojik profilleri (yaş, boy, cinsiyet, etnik köken), dental özellikleri, yaşa veya hastalığa bağlı kemiklerde gözlemlenen patolojik durumları, ölüm sonrasına ait tafonomik sebeplerden meydana gelmiş değişikliklerle birlikte, ölüm zamanına ait travmalar incelenerek muhtemel ölüm nedenleri belirlenebilmektedir (5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13). İnsan iskeletlerinde ölüm zamanına ait travmalar, kemiklerde tespit edilen kırık, çizik/kesik, yarık, delik, çökme ve deformasyonların analizleri ile mümkün olabilmektedir.…”