Advanced Medical Imaging and Reverse Engineering Technologies in Craniometric Study

Abstract

In crime scenes and accidents, the standard operating protocols for personal identification is not difficult when the entire body is found. As a result, the investigators can directly collect the sample of the decrease such as facial photograph, DNA, fingerprint and dental record in order to compare to possible relatives or with ante-mortem profile (De Valck, 2006). However, the investigators are not always lucky. In severe accidents such aircraft crashes, only little information of the decrease is available, the skin and soft tissue may be completely burnt out and the skeleton can be broken into small pieces due to the impact. The skeleton examination in historical sites by archaeologists presents even more complication. The archaeologists need not only to identify general aspects of the skeleton, for instant age, sex, cause of death, stature and race, but also to estimate the period of death and the possibility to discover the particular person that might be significant in the history. Several techniques have been applied to assist the identification of the decrease ranging from the simplest technique which may acquire the evidence from the personal belonging until using the advance scientific techniques. These techniques can be generally categorized into two methods, invasive and non-invasive. The invasive method includes biochemical analysis, microscopy, accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dating (with standard C14), ancient DNA analysis, histology and endoscope whereas the non-invasive technique involved the aid of engineering technologies such as radiographic analysis and computed tomography (CT) examination. From 1975 – 2005, the archaeological researches had been increasingly conducted by means of non-invasive techniques which 112 of 245 researches have applied the non-invasive technique and the trend of investigation gradually moved from invasive to non-invasive examinations (Zweifel, et al., 2009). The first non-invasive technique has been presented to the public in 1896 which the radiographic analysis was used to examine the ibis mummy in Belgium (Van Tiggelen, 2004). Soon after that, archaeologist realized the importance of radiological technique and applied broadly to examine great numbers of mummy (Dedouit, et al., 2010; Friedrich, et al., 2010; Recheis, et al., 1999; Zweifel, et al., 2009). One main