Virtopsy complementing traditional autopsy

Abstract

The autopsy is from the Greek word autopsia meaning “to see with one’s own eyes.” This procedure leads to extensive mutilation which often leaves the grieving family bothered. These drawbacks of the conventional autopsy led to the development of virtopsy. Virtopsy is the combination of the two words “Virtual Autopsy”. Virtopsy, like autopsy, is a multidisciplinary approach that uses other branches of advanced sciences like radiology, image processing, physics, and biomechanics that aid the conventional autopsy.This review article enumerates the benefits and drawbacks of both conventional autopsy and virtopsy indicating that neither is superior over the other and both must be used together to achieve a highly acceptable procedure to conduct autopsies.: Virtopsy is not the alternative to conventional autopsy but can be supportive and aids in achieving the perfect balance between the modern virtual autopsy and the old conventional autopsy. This review advocates a multidisciplinary research and advocacy to develop improved tools and protocols for better symbiotic relation between virtual autopsy and conventional autopsy to get the best out of the two.