While no exact cause is identified, likely reasons include the high expense of autopsies for hospitals, as well as the limited number of medical examiners in the country. Yet while the rates are declining, the need for them is not. One disturbing study, published in Histopathology in 2005, showed that at least one third of death certificates are likely inaccurate.
Researchers at UNM are trying to aid in forensic analysis by fine-tuning current and widely-used clinical techniques, such as MRI and CT scans, to work on human corpses. The idea is that imaging the bodies could either act as map for autopsies by providing important insight into the cause of death and stream-lining the examination or in some cases they could replace autopsies altogether.
The work is funded by the National Institute of Justice, and takes place mainly at UNM’s Office of the Medical Investigator. According to its website, UNM’s OMI handles all autopsies occurring in New Mexico and is staffed by licensed medical examiners, radiologists and other forensic scientists who are also professors in UNM’s Department of Pathology.
Natalie Adolphi, research associate professor in biochemistry and molecular biology, has teamed up with members of the OMI to adjust current MR imaging to be a viable analysis for dead bodies.
“Some of the challenges include MRI’s sensitivity to temperature changes – a dead body is much colder than a live one – and the decomposition of the tissue,” she said.
Adolphi’s work focuses on illuminating the normal differences in an MRI of a dead person versus a live one.
“You need to be able to differentiate between a finding that is a normal post-mortem finding from something that’s actually a disease or an injury,” Adolphi said.
To do this, Adolphi scans recently deceased animal tissue she receives from a custom meat processing place in Moriarty, she said.
The meat she uses in her research is the same meat people can buy at one of the local co-ops, simply the unwanted portions, she said.
“I get things like heads or organs,” Adolphi said. “They will call me and I will park my car outside and then they will walk things out to me.”
Another grant, also at the OMI, is closely related to Adolphi’s but instead involves the practicality of CT scans in post-mortem analysis, she said.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
“Unlike an autopsy, which takes hours, a full-body CT scan on a corpse can take as little as 15 minutes,” Adolphi said. “A valuable time-saver for places like the OMI, which I estimate performs around 2500 autopsies per year, or eight cases per day.”
Aside from stream-lining autopsies, the benefits of adding these imaging techniques as forensic tools include special cases such as people who for religious reasons do not want to have autopsies, and cases in which a dangerous disease is involved.
“One of the ways you can deal with really contagious stuff is to not have to do an autopsy on them in the first place,” Adolphi said. “You can examine someone with non-invasive means, you don’t have to cut into them and things aren’t aerosolized.”
Along with being uniquely academically-based, UNM’s OMI is unique in that most OMI facilities are only required to have regular X-ray imaging and do not have CT scans and MRI available. According to Adolphi, UNM’s OMI is one of only three sites in the U.S. routinely using CT scans for forensic analysis.
While she believes that the addition of these imaging tools will definitely help, she does not believe the autopsy will ever become unnecessary, Adolphi said.
“It is definitely not going to be a replacement for pathology,” she said. “I bet it will kind of be a mixture of whatever is the best tool.”
Lauren Topper is a freelance reporter at the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @DailyLobo.
