The cut-free autopsy
10th September 2010
A recent addition to the autopsy workflow is the possibility of conducting postmortem imaging — in its 3D version, also called virtual autopsy (VA) — using MDCT or MRI data from scans of cadavers and with direct volume rendering (DVR) 3D techniques. At the foundation of the VA development are the modern imaging modalities that can generate large, high-quality datasets with submillimeter precision. Interactive visualization of these 3D datasets can provide valuable insight into the corpses and enables noninvasive diagnostic procedures. Efficient handling and analysis of the datasets is, however, problematic. For instance, in postmortem CT imaging, not being limited by a certain radiation dose per patient means the datasets can be generated with such a high resolution that they become difficult to handle in today’s archive retrieval and interactive visualization systems, specifically in the case of full body scans.