Abstract
Thanatology deals with the study of early and postmortem changes in relation to the estimation of the time since death. These normal postmortem changes depend on internal and external factors, such as body temperature, preexisting conditions, underlying disease or injury, and the postmortem interval.
Although the postmortem imaging has been validated to be a reasonable alternative to conventional autopsy to detect potential causes and manner of death in trauma cases and in identification of dead corpses, the use of computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is recently becoming a potential tool to understand and investigate the early and later postmortem changes. The authors report on current utility, limitations, and ongoing developments of radiologic methods in postmortem changes.
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Zerbo, S., Scopelliti, L., Vernuccio, F., Lo Re, G., Argo, A., Kharoshah, M. (2020). Radiology for Postmortem. 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_26
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