Much like a finger leaves its own unique print to help identify a person, researchers are now discovering that skull fractures leave certain signatures that can help investigators better determine what caused the injury.<\/p>\n
Implications from the Michigan State University research could help with the determination of truth in child abuse cases, potentially resulting in very different outcomes.<\/p>\n
Until now, multiple skull fractures meant several points of impact to the head and often were thought to suggest child abuse.<\/p>\n
Roger Haut, a University Distinguished Professor in biomechanics, and Todd Fenton, a forensic anthropologist, have now proven this theory false. They’ve found that a single blow to the head not only causes one fracture, but may also cause several, unconnected fractures in the skull. Additionally, they\u2019ve discovered that not all fractures start at the point of impact \u2013 some actually may begin in a remote location and travel back toward the impact site.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a bit like smashing raw hamburger into a patty on the grill,\u201d Haut said. \u201cWhen you press down on the meat to flatten it, all the edges crack. That\u2019s what can happen when a head injury occurs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because piglet skulls have similar mechanical properties as infant human skulls \u2013 meaning they bend and break in similar ways \u2013 Haut and Fenton used the already deceased specimens in their research and found they were able to classify the different fracture patterns with a high degree of accuracy.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur impact scenarios on the piglet skulls gave us about an 82 percent accuracy rate, while on the older skulls, it improved to about 95 percent,\u201d Fenton said.<\/p>\n
To help them get to this level of accuracy, both researchers teamed up with Anil Jain, a University Distinguished Professor in computer science and engineering at MSU, to develop a mathematical algorithm to help classify the fractures.<\/p>\n
\u201cA major issue in child death cases is you never really know what happened,\u201d Haut said. \u201cThe prosecutor may have one idea, the medical examiner another, and the defendant a completely different scenario.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fenton and Haut\u2019s close relationship with medical examiners often results in them being called upon in certain, hard-to-determine cases. They\u2019ve used this new knowledge to help solve these cases, but both are also looking to use Jain\u2019s algorithm in an online resource that will provide even more assistance to investigators.<\/p>\n
The team is currently developing a database, or Fracture Printing Interface, that will allow forensic anthropologists and investigators to upload human fracture patterns from different abuse cases and help them determine what most likely caused an injury.<\/p>\nMichigan State University<\/link>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Much like a finger leaves its own unique print to help identify a person, researchers are now discovering that skull fractures leave certain signatures that can help investigators better determine what caused the injury. Implications from the Michigan State University research could help with the determination of truth in child abuse cases, potentially resulting in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1420"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}