The development of forensic imaging in Italy. A systematic review of the literature

Objective

With a specific focus on Italy, the aim of this paper was to assess the development of forensic imaging techniques, to determine which techniques have had a larger diffusion, and to identify the most relevant field of application.

Materials and methods

An online literature search was performed to identify Italian publications on forensic imaging between 1956 and February of 2018. For each publication included in the analysis, the following data were annotated: title and abstract, year of publication, type of article, and number and type of subjects examined. The selected publications were also categorized based on imaging modalities and the forensic field of investigation.

Results

A total of 44 Italian publications were included in the study. Publications of forensic imaging have increased in the last years. More than half of all manuscripts were related to post-mortem investigations (31/44; 70%). The majority of all post-mortem publications were focused on the documentation of injury or disease followed by identification and age estimation category (5/44; 11%). In cases of unnatural death, the principle issue of research was gunshot wounds, followed by asphyxia and drowning. The most commonly used imaging modality was computed tomography (CT).

Conclusions

The results of this study showed an increase of forensic imaging in Italy in the last years. However, a review of the literature demonstrated that imaging techniques are not yet exhaustively adopted by the Italian forensic community, and that further research is needed to provide information about the accuracy of forensic imaging techniques with respect to autopsy.