ORIGINAL ARTICLE Forensic 3D documentation of skin injuries Chiara Villa 1 Received: 24 April 2016 /Accepted: 14 November 2016 /Published online: 2 December 2016 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016 Abstract An accurate and precise documentation of injuries is fundamental in a forensic pathological context. Photographs and manual measurements are taken of all injuries during au- topsies, but ordinary photography projects a 3D wound on a 2D space. Using technologies such as photogrammetry, it is possible to create 3D detailed, to-scale, true-color documen- tation of skin injuries from 2D pictures. A comparison be- tween the measurements of 165 lesions taken during autopsies and on photogrammetrically processed pictures was per- formed. Different types of lesions were considered: 38 blunt force injuries, 58 sharp force injuries, and 69 gunshot injuries. In all cases, very low differences were found with mean ≤ 0.06 cm and median ≤ 0.04 cm; a mean difference of 0.13 cm was found for the blunt force injuries. Wilcoxon signed-rank test showed no statistically significant differences between the two measurement methods (p > 0.05). The results of intra- and inter-observer tests indicated perfect agreement between the observers with mean value differences of ≤ 0.02 cm. This study demonstrated the validity of using pho- togrammetry for documentation of injuries in a forensic path- ological context. Importantly, photogrammetry provides a per- manent 3D documentation of the injuries that can be reassessed with great accuracy at any time. Such 3D models may also be combined with 3D reconstruction obtained from post-mortem CT scans for a comprehensive documentation of the lesion (internal and external information) and ultimately used for virtual reconstruction. Keywords Photogrammetry . Injuries . 3D models . Autopsy Introduction An accurate and precise documentation of injuries is funda- mental in a forensic pathological context. This documentation may be used in court and be crucial to the outcome of a trial. The standard documentation procedure of the lesions during the autopsy includes a verbal description, manual measure- ments, sketches on body diagrams, and photographs. Limiting the documentation to these steps, the 3D information of the lesions is not properly recorded; indeed, linear measure- ments and photographs reduce a 3D wound to a 2D space. Computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) scanning have been introduced in many forensic depart- ments [1–4] and allow a 3D documentation of internal and external aspects of the body, including the lesions. However, the resolution of CT and MR is not adequate for an accurate documentation of the skin injuries and importantly, the color information is not acquired. Alternatively, 3D surface scan- ning technologies could be employed. Structured-light 3D scanners have predominantly been used over 3D laser scan- ners and can generate 3D detailed, to-scale documentation of lesions [5–7]. However, these 3D surface scanners are not always able to directly acquire the color information; a colored texture can be generated draping the color information from a photograph or from photographs processed using photogram- metry. The process of merging the scans and the photographs can be performed only if several reference points on and around the area of interest are present during the acquisition process. The preparation of the body and the scan process are Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00414-016-1499-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Chiara Villa chiara.villa@sund.ku.dk 1 Laboratory of Biological Anthropology, Section of Forensic Pathology, Department of Forensic Medicine, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark Int J Legal Med (2017) 131:751–759 DOI 10.1007/s00414-016-1499-9