Citation

Bai RF, Ma SH, Zhang HD, Chang L, Zhang Z, Liu L, Zhang FQ, Guo ZM, Shi MS. Int. J. Legal Med. 2014; 128(2): 353-360.

Affiliation

Department of Radiology, First Affiliated Hospital, Medical College of Shantou University, Shantou, 515041, People's Republic of China, brf1000cn@yahoo.com.cn.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s00414-013-0829-4

PMID

23408050

Abstract

A block of an injury instrument will be left in wounds sometimes, and the suspect instrument can be discriminated by comparison with the block that was left through elemental analysis. In this study, three brands (Shibazi, Zhangxiaoquan, Qiaoxifu) of kitchen knives with forged, chop, and slice application series were analyzed by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES) and Infrared Absorption to investigate the type, number of elements and the reference range used for comparing. The results show that when regarding one or more element as the discriminative threshold, together with 5 % relative standard deviation (RSD) as the reference range, all the samples could be distinguished among different series. Furthermore, within the same series, the discriminative capability could reach up to 88.57 % for all samples. In addition, elements with high content, such as Cr, Mn, and C, were useful to discriminate among different series, and trace elements, such as Ni, Si, and Cu, were useful within the same series. However, in practice, it is necessary to evaluate the accuracy of the method by Standard Reference Material (SRM) before an examination is performed.

Language: en