Department of Biomedical and Dental Sciences,and of Morphological and Functional Images, Section of Legal Medicine, University of Messina, Via Consolare Valeria 1, 98125, Messina, Italy.
Department of Biomedical and Dental Sciences,and of Morphological and Functional Images, Section of Radiological Sciences, University of Messina, Messina, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2020 Jan 15;10(1):392. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-57357-z.
Estimating early postmortem interval (EPI) is a difficult task in daily forensic activity due to limitations of accurate and reliable methods. The aim of the present work is to describe a novel approach in the estimation of EPI based on quantitative magnetic resonance molecular imaging (qMRMI) using a pig phantom since post-mortem degradation of pig meat is similar to that of human muscles. On a pig phantom maintained at 20° degree, using a 1.5 T MRI scanner we performed 10 scans (every 4 hours) monitoring apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC), fractional anisotropy (FA) magnetization transfer ration (MTR), tractography and susceptibility weighted changes in muscles until 36 hours after death. Cooling of the phantom during the experiment was recorded. Histology was also obtained. Pearson's Test was carried out for time correlation between post-mortem interval and MRI data. We found a significative inverse correlation between ADC, FA, MT values and PMI. Our preliminary data shows that post-mortem qMRMI is a potential powerful tool in accurately determining EPI and is worth of further investigation.
由于缺乏准确和可靠的方法，在日常法医学活动中估计早期死后间隔时间（EPI）是一项艰巨的任务。本研究的目的是描述一种新的方法，即使用猪模型进行定量磁共振分子成像（qMRMI）来估计 EPI，因为猪肉的死后降解与人类肌肉相似。在保持在 20°C 的猪模型上，我们使用 1.5T MRI 扫描仪进行了 10 次扫描（每 4 小时一次），监测肌肉的表观扩散系数（ADC）、各向异性分数（FA）、磁化转移率（MTR）、轨迹和磁化率加权变化，直到死后 36 小时。记录了实验过程中的冷却情况。还获得了组织学结果。使用皮尔逊检验进行死后时间与 MRI 数据之间的相关性分析。我们发现 ADC、FA、MT 值与 PMI 之间存在显著的负相关。我们的初步数据表明，死后 qMRMI 是一种准确确定 EPI 的潜在强大工具，值得进一步研究。
