VIRTÓPSIA: AVANÇOS TECNOLÓGICOS EM MEDICINA LEGAL E PERÍCIA MÉDICA

Abstract

In recent decades there has been an important advance in forensic medicine as the emergence of virtopsy, a technique in forensic radiology which uses radiological images in three dimensions, either by CT or MRI, exams which have contributed to the diagnosis of various diseases. Although it is not possible to observe the color tone and consistency of structures as in conventional autopsy, these methods obtain postmortem images through virtopsy, with high resolution images which aid conventional autopsy. The objective of this study is to conduct a literature review on virtopsy and analyze the advantages and disadvantages of CT and MRI usage. CT is an imaging method that allows the identification of trauma, fractures and calcifications and MRI is useful for the study of soft tissue, however not differentiating the colorations of injuries but the nature of them. It is observed that the virtopsy has proven to be a superior and complementary method compared to traditional methods of autopsy and has many advantages. However, further studies are needed to completely replace conventional autopsy with imaging tests.