Citation

Puentes K, Taveira F, Madureira AJ, Santos A, Magalhães T. J. Forensic Leg. Med. 2009; 16(7): 407-410.

Affiliation

National Institute of Legal Medicine, North Branch, Jardim Carrilho Videira, 4050-167 Porto, Portugal. alkimed@yahoo.es

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jflm.2009.04.003

PMID

19733332

Abstract

In the medico-legal assessment of cases of aggression with firearms, imaging techniques have a particularly important role, especially in the study of a bullet's path through the victim's body. The analysis of these trajectories can be performed by the use of three-dimensional reconstitution techniques, namely Three-Dimensional Multi-Slice Computed Tomography (3D-MSCT). This imaging technique has been widely used in fatal cases, as a very important complement of the classical autopsy procedures, becoming known as "virtual autopsy" or "Virtopsy". To our knowledge, no reports describing the use of 3D-MSCT in non-fatal cases have been described in the medico-legal literature. The authors present a case of a man with a gunshot injury, in the context of a multiple aggressor situation, in which it was not possible to extract the bullet. To accurately determine the bullet's trajectory, 3D-MSCT was performed, thus contributing to a more reliable reconstruction of the crime scene in which the victim and the suspects were located.

Language: en