Reconstruction and validation of head trauma accidents based on legal medicine data

Abstract

The autopsy is performed when a case is suspected, and the autopsy physician makes an educated guess as to the circumstances of the accident, which is the decisive factor in determining the case. Conversely, in head trauma cases, the injury situation can be inferred by simulation from the mechanical point of view. In this study, we estimated the behavior of the victim by whole-multi-body analysis, calculate the mechanical responses in the brain at the time of collision by head finite element analysis, and compared the calculated results with the location of the victim’s injury to verify the validity of accident reconstruction. In a hit-and-run case, we estimated the violations traffic regulations, the vehicle type, the vehicle speed, and the relative position of the victim and the vehicle. The results demonstrated the possibility of quantitative evaluation by adding mechanical information to the opinion findings of forensic experts.