Autopsy and Identification Techniques

Beauthier, Jean-Pol; Lefèvre, Philippe; Valck, Eddy De

doi:10.5772/13610

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…The use of tattoos for the identification of the deceased is widely established (80), although no extensive research has been performed to understand the changes occurring due to decomposition. For example, preserved tattoos helped to identify victims of Asian tsunami in 2004 (84). A description of a tattoo of a deceased, and superimposition of antemortem and postmortem photographs of tattoo aided positive identification as reported for cases in Brazil and Germany (85,86).…”

Section: Biometricsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personal Identification of Deceased Persons: An Overview of the Current Methods Based on Physical Appearance

Čaplová

Obertová

Gibelli

et al. 2017

Journal of Forensic Sciences

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The use of the physical appearance of the deceased has become more important because the available antemortem information for comparisons may consist only of a physical description and photographs. Twenty-one articles dealing with the identification based on the physiognomic features of the human body were selected for review and were divided into four sections: (i) visual recognition, (ii) specific facial/body areas, (iii) biometrics, and (iv) dental superimposition. While opinions about the reliability of the visual recognition differ, the search showed that it has been used in mass disasters, even without testing its objectivity and reliability. Specific facial areas being explored for the identification of dead; however, their practical use is questioned, similarly to soft biometrics. The emerging dental superimposition seems to be the only standardized and successfully applied method for identification so far. More research is needed into a potential use of the individualizing features, considering that postmortem changes and technical difficulties may affect the identification.

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Section: Biometricsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personal Identification of Deceased Persons: An Overview of the Current Methods Based on Physical Appearance

Čaplová

Obertová

Gibelli

et al. 2017

Journal of Forensic Sciences

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“…Strict compliance with recovery techniques is fundamental to the pursuit of quality identification. We previously described the enormous difficulties encountered when the recovery of bodies and fragments was carried out by unprofessional volunteers without respect to the procedure [ 1 , 2 ].…”

Section: Organization and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Belgium experience in disaster victim identification applied in handling terrorist attack at Brussels Airport 2016

Beauthier

Voorde

Lefèvre

et al. 2020

Forensic Sciences Research

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The Belgian disaster victim identification (DVI) team is involved in many investigations in our country. Indeed, this specialized team of the federal police oversees searching for and investigating criminally buried dead bodies, identification of unknown putrefied corpses, and more. The Belgian DVI team also assists with the identification of victims of mass disasters (natural, accidental, and mass murders). In this article, we consider the contributions of different teams (forensic pathology, anthropology, and odontology, federal police, and crime scene investigation) both on the scene of the attack at the Brussels National Airport (Zaventem) and in the laboratory work (autopsies, sample studies).

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“…For victim and criminal identification, tattoos have been used to narrow down suspect lists, especially for those cases when hard biometric traits, such as face and fingerprint, are not available. For example, tattoos were used to assist in identifying victims of the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001 [10].…”

Section: Blood Vessel Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Restoring blood vessel patterns and tattoos from JPEG compressed skin images for forensic analysis

Li¹

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Using digital evidence images for criminal and victim identification in some legal cases, such as child sexual abuse and masked gunman, can be very challenging, because the faces of criminals or victims are not visible. Blood vessel patterns under human skin and tattoos have been proposed as biometrics to overcome this challenge. However, these images are always taken by consumer cameras and compressed by the JPEG compression method. As a lossy compression method, the JPEG compression method seriously degrades the clarity of the blood vessel patterns and tattoos. To finally utilize blood vessels and tattoos for identifying criminals and victims or searching suspects, overcoming this challenge from the JPEG compression method is essential. Existing methods are not suitable for restoring the blood vessel patterns and tattoos because most of them are designed for generic images and their main targets are to remove the blocking artifacts and improve the visual quality. In this thesis, a skin image analysis and a compression test are performed to study the characteristics of compressed skin images. Then, based on the skin image analysis and the compression test, two skin image restoration algorithms are specially designed to restore blood vessel patterns from compressed images. Finally, an algorithm based on deep learning is proposed to recover tattoo images from their degraded versions. Skin image databases and tattoo image database are constructed for algorithm development. To recover the blood vessel patterns from compressed skin images, a skin image analysis and a compression test are first conducted to find out the critical factors influencing blood vessel pattern quality. The skin image analysis aims to figure out how blood vessel information distributes in the luminance channel (the Y channel) and the chrominance channels (the U and V channels). The compression test is further performed to identify how the lossy operations in the JPEG compression method degrade the blood vessel pattern quality. The down-sampling operation and the quantization operation are examined separately in the test. The importance of the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) coefficients is also tested step by step. Based on the analysis, two restoration algorithms are designed to recover blood vessel patterns by estimating the original critical DCT coefficients. I would like to thank all those people who contributed in some way to my Ph.D. study. First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Kong Wai-Kin Adams for his invaluable guidance, selfless support and encouragement during my Ph.D. study. His enthusiasm and rigorous attitude to research inspire me in my study and work. He spends a lot of time and effort to train me to be an independent researcher. And he shares with me his own experience and vision about research which motivate me to reach my own goals as well. Without his guidance and persistent help this thesis would not have been possible. My sincere thanks also go to Dr. Tang Chaoying and Dr. ...

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Autopsy and Identification Techniques

Cited by 7 publications

References 30 publications

Personal Identification of Deceased Persons: An Overview of the Current Methods Based on Physical Appearance

Personal Identification of Deceased Persons: An Overview of the Current Methods Based on Physical Appearance

Belgium experience in disaster victim identification applied in handling terrorist attack at Brussels Airport 2016

Restoring blood vessel patterns and tattoos from JPEG compressed skin images for forensic analysis

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