Displaying publications 1 - 20 of 35 in total

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  1. Abdel Aziz MH, Badr El Dine FM, Saeed NM
    J Forensic Leg Med, 2016 Nov;44:103-110.
    PMID: 27743546 DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2016.10.003
    INTRODUCTION: Identification of sex and ethnicity has always been a challenge in the fields of forensic medicine and criminal investigations. Fingerprinting and DNA comparisons are probably the most common techniques used in this context. However, since they cannot always be used, it is necessary to apply different and less known techniques such as lip prints.

    AIM OF THE WORK: Is to study the pattern of lip print in Egyptian and Malaysian populations and its relation to sex and populations difference. Also, to develop equations for sex and populations detection using lip print pattern by different populations (Egyptian and Malaysian).

    SUBJECTS AND METHODS: The sample comprised of 120 adults volunteers divided into two ethnic groups; sixty adult Egyptians (30 males and 30 females) and sixty adult Malaysians (30 males and 30 females). The lip prints were collected on a white paper. Each lip print was divided into four compartments and were classified and scored according to Suzuki and Tsuchihashi classification. Data were statistically analyzed.

    RESULTS: The results showed that type III lip print pattern (intersected grooves) was the predominant type in both the Egyptian and Malaysian populations. Type II and III were the most frequent in Egyptian males (28.3% each), while in Egyptian females type III pattern was predominant (46.7%). As regards Malaysian males, type III lip print pattern was the predominant one (41.7%), while type II lip print pattern was predominant (30.8%) in Malaysian females. Statistical analysis of different quadrants showed significant differences between males and females in the Egyptian population in the third and fourth quadrants. On the other hand, significant differences were detected only in the second quadrant between Malaysian males and females. Also, a statistically significant difference was present in the second quadrant between Egyptian and Malaysian males. Using the regression analysis, four regression equations were obtained.

  2. Asif MK, Nambiar P, Mani SA, Ibrahim NB, Khan IM, Sukumaran P
    J Forensic Leg Med, 2018 Feb;54:53-61.
    PMID: 29324319 DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2017.12.010
    The methods of dental age estimation and identification of unknown deceased individuals are evolving with the introduction of advanced innovative imaging technologies in forensic investigations. However, assessing small structures like root canal volumes can be challenging in spite of using highly advanced technology. The aim of the study was to investigate which amongst the two methods of volumetric analysis of maxillary central incisors displayed higher strength of correlation between chronological age and pulp/tooth volume ratio for Malaysian adults. Volumetric analysis of pulp cavity/tooth ratio was employed in Method 1 and pulp chamber/crown ratio (up to cemento-enamel junction) was analysed in Method 2. The images were acquired employing CBCT scans and enhanced by manipulating them with the Mimics software. These scans belonged to 56 males and 54 females and their ages ranged from 16 to 65 years. Pearson correlation and regression analysis indicated that both methods used for volumetric measurements had strong correlation between chronological age and pulp/tooth volume ratio. However, Method 2 gave higher coefficient of determination value (R2 = 0.78) when compared to Method 1 (R2 = 0.64). Moreover, manipulation in Method 2 was less time consuming and revealed higher inter-examiner reliability (0.982) as no manual intervention during 'multiple slice editing phase' of the software was required. In conclusion, this study showed that volumetric analysis of pulp cavity/tooth ratio is a valuable gender independent technique and the Method 2 regression equation should be recommended for dental age estimation.
  3. George R, Nora Afandi NS, Zainal Abidin SN, Binti Ishak NI, Soe HH, Ismail AR
    J Forensic Leg Med, 2016 Apr;39:156-60.
    PMID: 26896666 DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2016.01.021
    We assessed the resemblance of lip print patterns between parents and biological offspring in families of 31 Malay students as well as the distribution of different types of lip print in the study group. Only a few studies have successfully established the inheritance pattern of lip prints. Such studies can be population specific and need to be conducted in various populations. No such study have been conducted in Malay population in Malaysia, according to our knowledge. Present study was carried out to ascertain whether there is any inherence pattern in lip prints and thereby to investigate the potential role of lip prints in personal identification. We found 58.06% resemblance of lip print patterns between the parents and their biological offspring in our study. The influence of heredity in lip print pattern is still a new concept and there is lack of concrete evidence. The data from our study shows that there is potential influence of inheritance in the lip print patterns among the family members. Further researches involving larger samples size are suggested to derive more reliable and accurate results. The most common lip print pattern among the study group is type I (29.84%) followed by type II (23.12%), type III (22.45%), type I' (13.44%), type IV (9.54%) and type V (1.61%). Racial variations in lip print patterns and their prevalence may serve as an aid in forensic identification and crime scene investigation. The results of this pilot study will help in establishing guidelines for future researches on lip print analysis in Malaysia.
  4. Ismail NA, Abdullah N, Mohamad Noor MH, Lai PS, Shafie MS, Nor FM
    J Forensic Leg Med, 2019 Apr;63:11-17.
    PMID: 30825771 DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2019.02.010
    BACKGROUND: In the application of scientific human skeletal variation in medico-legal matters, virtual anthropology is the current technique performed to examine skeleton and its body parts. Hence, this study was conducted to assess the accuracy and reliability of virtual femur measurement through intra and inter-observer error analysis, and comparison was made between the virtual and conventional methods.

    METHODS: A total of 15 femora were examined with four parameters i.e. maximum length of femur (FeMl), diameter of femoral head (FeHd), transverse diameter of midshaft (FeMd) and condylar breadth (FeCb). Osteometric board and vernier calipers were employed for the conventional method, while CT reconstructed images and Osirix MD software was utilised for the virtual method.

    RESULTS: Results exhibited that there were no significant differences in the measurements by conventional and virtual methods. There were also no significant differences in the measurements by the intra or inter-observer error analyses. The intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) were more than 0.95 by both intra and inter-observer error analyses. Technical error of measurement had displayed values within the acceptable ranges (rTEM <0.08 for intra-observer, <2.25 for inter-observer), and coefficient of reliability (R) indicated small measurement errors (R > 0.95 for intra-observer, R > 0.92 for inter-observer). By parameters, FeMl showed the highest R value (0.99) with the least error in different methods and observers (rTEM = 0.02-0.41%). Bland and Altman plots revealed points scattered close to zero indicating perfect agreement by both virtual and conventional methods. The mean differences for FeMl, FeHd, FeMd and FeCb measurements were 0.01 cm, -0.01 cm, 0.02 cm and 0.01 cm, respectively.

    CONCLUSION: This brought to suggest that bone measurement by virtual method was highly accurate and reliable as in the conventional method. It is recommended for implementation in the future anthropological studies especially in countries with limited skeletal collection.

  5. Jayaraman J, Wong HM, King NM, Roberts GJ
    J Forensic Leg Med, 2016 Oct;43:26-33.
    PMID: 27441983 DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2016.07.007
    BACKGROUND: Many countries have recently experienced a rapid increase in the demand for forensic age estimates of unaccompanied minors. Hong Kong is a major tourist and business center where there has been an increase in the number of people intercepted with false travel documents. An accurate estimation of age is only possible when a dataset for age estimation that has been derived from the corresponding ethnic population. Thus, the aim of this study was to develop and validate a Reference Data Set (RDS) for dental age estimation for southern Chinese.

    MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 2306 subjects were selected from the patient archives of a large dental hospital and the chronological age for each subject was recorded. This age was assigned to each specific stage of dental development for each tooth to create a RDS. To validate this RDS, a further 484 subjects were randomly chosen from the patient archives and their dental age was assessed based on the scores from the RDS. Dental age was estimated using meta-analysis command corresponding to random effects statistical model. Chronological age (CA) and Dental Age (DA) were compared using the paired t-test.

    RESULTS: The overall difference between the chronological and dental age (CA-DA) was 0.05 years (2.6 weeks) for males and 0.03 years (1.6 weeks) for females. The paired t-test indicated that there was no statistically significant difference between the chronological and dental age (p > 0.05).

    CONCLUSION: The validated southern Chinese reference dataset based on dental maturation accurately estimated the chronological age.

  6. Kavitha R, Nazni WA, Tan TC, Lee HL, Azirun MS
    J Forensic Leg Med, 2013 Jul;20(5):480-2.
    PMID: 23756518 DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2013.03.007
    Forensic entomological specimens collected from human decedents during crime scene investigations in Malaysia in the past 6 years (2005-2010) are reviewed. A total of 80 cases were recorded and 93 specimens were collected. From these specimens, 10 species of cyclorrphagic flies were identified, consisting of Chrysomya rufifacies (Macquart) -38 specimens (40.86%), Chrysomya megacephala (Fabricius) -36 specimens (38.70%), Chrysomya villeneuvi (Patton) -2 specimens (2.15%), Chrysomya nigripes (Aubertin) -2 specimens (2.15%), Chrysomya pinguis (Walker) -1 specimen (1.08%), Hermetia illucens (Linnaeus) -1 specimen (1.08%), Hemipyrellia liguriens (Wiedemann) -5 specimens (5.37%), Synthesiomyia nudiseta (Wulp) -1 specimen (1.08%), Megaselia scalaris (Loew)-1 specimen (1.08%) and Sarcophaga ruficornis (Fabricius) -4 specimens (4.30%). In two specimens (2.15%), the maggots were not identifiable. Ch. megacephala and Ch. rufifacies were the commonest species found in human decedents from three different ecological habitats. S. nudiseta is an uncommon species found only on human cadavers from indoors. A total of 75 cases (93.75%) had a single fly infestation and 5 cases (6.25%) had double fly infestation. In conclusion, although large numbers of fly species were found on human decedents, the predominant species are still those of Chrysomya.
  7. Koh KK, Tan JS, Nambiar P, Ibrahim N, Mutalik S, Khan Asif M
    J Forensic Leg Med, 2017 May;48:15-21.
    PMID: 28407514 DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2017.03.004
    Forensic odontology plays a vital role in the identification and age estimation of unknown deceased individuals. The purpose of this study is to estimate the chronological age from Cone-Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) images by measuring the buccal alveolar bone level (ABL) to the cemento-enamel junction and to investigate the possibility of employing the age-related structural changes of teeth as studied by Gustafson. In addition, this study will determine the forensic reliability of employing CBCT images as a technique for dental age estimation. A total of 284 CBCT images of Malays and Chinese patients (150 females and 134 males), aged from 20 years and above were selected, measured and stages of age-related changes were recorded using the i-CAT Vision software. Lower first premolars of both left and right side of the jaw were chosen and the characteristics described by Gustafson, namely attrition, secondary dentine formation and periodontal recession were evaluated. Linear regression analysis was performed for the buccal bone level and the R values obtained were 0.85 and 0.82 for left and right side respectively. Gustafson's characteristics were analysed using multiple regression analysis with chronological age as the dependent variable. The results of the analysis showed R values ranged from 0.44 to 0.62. Therefore it can be safely concluded that the buccal bone level highly correlated with the chronological age and is consequently the most suitable age-related characteristic for forensic age estimation.
  8. Kumar V, San KP, Idwan A, Shah N, Hajar S, Norkahfi M
    J Forensic Leg Med, 2007 Apr;14(3):151-4.
    PMID: 16914354
    The main aim of this study is to determine the causes and the epidemiological aspects of sudden natural deaths. Data were collected from 545 sudden natural autopsies in UMMC, Kuala Lumpur over a five-year period, from 1st January 2000 to 31st December 2004. There were 475 males and 70 females. The largest number of sudden natural deaths was in the age group of 41-50 years. 35.8%, 30.5% and 11.7% of the patients were Chinese, Indian and Malay, respectively. A majority of the patients were married (59.8%) and came from the semiskilled-unskilled group (30.6%). The monthly distribution was almost constant. Cardiovascular diseases were the most important cause contributing 64.9% in sudden natural deaths.
  9. Kumar V
    J Forensic Leg Med, 2007 Jan;14(1):35-8.
    PMID: 16530454
    Death by hanging is believed to be a painless method of committing suicide. In most cases the noose has a knot and on this basis only it can be labeled as atypical or typical hanging. A 35 year Chinese man committed suicide by hanging with a ligature material made of electric wire where there was no knot present on the noose.
  10. Kumar V, Mohanty MK, Kanth S
    J Forensic Leg Med, 2007 Jan;14(1):3-6.
    PMID: 17046310
    The purpose of this study was to record and evaluate the causes and the magnitude of the fatal burn injuries retrospectively. An analysis of autopsy records revealed 19.4% cases of burn injuries amongst the total autopsies done over 10years period (1993-2002) in the mortuary of the department of Forensic Medicine of Kasturba medical College, Manipal. The majority of deaths (78.5%) occurred between 11 and 40years of age group with preponderance of females (74.8%). The flame burns were seen in 94.1% of the victims followed by scalds and electrical burns in 2.8% and 2.5% cases, respectively. The majority of burn incidents were accidental (75.8%) in nature followed by suicidal (11.5%) and homicidal (3.1%) deaths. The percentage of burn (TBSA) over 40% were observed in most of the cases (92.5%). The majority of deaths occurred within a week (69.87%) and most the victims died because of septicemia (50.9%).
  11. Leong YH, Ariff AM, Khan HRM, Rani NAA, Majid MIA
    J Forensic Leg Med, 2018 May;56:16-20.
    PMID: 29525581 DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2018.03.007
    This study analyses the incidences and patterns of paraquat poisoning from calls received at the Malaysia National Poison Centre (NPC) since 2004 following the ban of the herbicide (2004-2006) and subsequent restriction up to year 2015. Related reported cases to the centre over twelve years (2004-2015) were retrieved and studied in respect to socio-demographic characteristics, mode and type of poisonings, exposure routes and location of incident. Ages of poisoned victims range from 10 months old to 98 years with males being intoxicated more frequently than females (ratio male to female = 2.7). The age group mainly involved in the poisoning was 20-39 years. The most common mode was intentional (62.8%) followed by unintentional (36.9%). Among the 1232 reported cases, suicidal poisoning was the highest (57.2%); accidental poisoning (30.8%) and occupational poisoning (3.3%). The findings showed an upward trend of suicidal poisoning over the years, clearly emphasizing the need for more stringent and effective enforcement to ensure the safe use of paraquat.
  12. Mansourvar M, Ismail MA, Raj RG, Kareem SA, Aik S, Gunalan R, et al.
    J Forensic Leg Med, 2014 Feb;22:26-9.
    PMID: 24485416 DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2013.11.011
    Recently, determination of skeletal age, defined as the assessment of bone age, has rapidly become an important task between forensic experts and radiologists. The Greulich-Pyle (GP) atlas is one of the most frequently used methods for the assessment of skeletal age around the world. After presentation of the GP approach for the estimation of the bone age, much research has been conducted to examine the usability of this method in various geographic or ethnic categories. This study investigates on a small-scale and compares the reliability of the GP atlas for assessment of the bone age for four ethnic groups - Asian, African/American, Caucasian and Hispanic - for a different range of ages.
  13. Marroquin Penaloza TY, Karkhanis S, Kvaal SI, Nurul F, Kanagasingam S, Franklin D, et al.
    J Forensic Leg Med, 2016 Nov;44:178-182.
    PMID: 27821308 DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2016.10.013
    Different non-invasive methods have been proposed for dental age estimation in adults, with the Kvaal et al. method as one of the more frequently tested in different populations. The purpose of this study was to apply the Kvaal et al. method for dental age estimation on modern volumetric data from 3D digital systems. To this end, 101 CBCT images from a Malaysian population were used. Fifty-five per cent were female (n = 55), and forty-five percent were male (n = 46), with a median age of 31 years for both sexes. As tomographs allow the observer to obtain a sagittal and coronal view of the teeth, the Kvaal pulp/root width measurements and ratios were calculated in the bucco-lingual and mesio-distal aspects of the tooth. From these data different linear regression models and formulae were built. The most accurate models for estimating age were obtained from a diverse combination of measurements (SEE ±10.58 years), and for the mesio-distal measurements of the central incisor at level A (SEE ±12.84 years). This accuracy, however is outside an acceptable range in for forensic application (SEE ±10.00 years), and is also more time consuming than the original approach based on dental radiographs.
  14. Mohd Nor F, Das S
    J Forensic Leg Med, 2012 Jan;19(1):42-5.
    PMID: 22152448 DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2011.07.008
    We present a case of skeletonised human remains. In the present case report, a body was exhumed from the ground above a cemetery. On exhumation, the body was partially-skeletonised with adipocere formation on the upper part of the body. Autopsy of the body showed two bullets in the right thigh muscle and lumbar vertebrae between L4 and L5. Postmortem changes and destruction of soft tissue made it impossible to determine direction of fire through the body, even in a careful complete autopsy.
  15. Mohd Yusof MY, Cauwels R, Deschepper E, Martens L
    J Forensic Leg Med, 2015 Aug;34:40-4.
    PMID: 26165657 DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2015.05.004
    The third molar development (TMD) has been widely utilized as one of the radiographic method for dental age estimation. By using the same radiograph of the same individual, third molar eruption (TME) information can be incorporated to the TMD regression model. This study aims to evaluate the performance of dental age estimation in individual method models and the combined model (TMD and TME) based on the classic regressions of multiple linear and principal component analysis. A sample of 705 digital panoramic radiographs of Malay sub-adults aged between 14.1 and 23.8 years was collected. The techniques described by Gleiser and Hunt (modified by Kohler) and Olze were employed to stage the TMD and TME, respectively. The data was divided to develop three respective models based on the two regressions of multiple linear and principal component analysis. The trained models were then validated on the test sample and the accuracy of age prediction was compared between each model. The coefficient of determination (R²) and root mean square error (RMSE) were calculated. In both genders, adjusted R² yielded an increment in the linear regressions of combined model as compared to the individual models. The overall decrease in RMSE was detected in combined model as compared to TMD (0.03-0.06) and TME (0.2-0.8). In principal component regression, low value of adjusted R(2) and high RMSE except in male were exhibited in combined model. Dental age estimation is better predicted using combined model in multiple linear regression models.
  16. Mujtaba G, Shuib L, Raj RG, Rajandram R, Shaikh K
    J Forensic Leg Med, 2018 Jul;57:41-50.
    PMID: 29801951 DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2017.07.001
    OBJECTIVES: Automatic text classification techniques are useful for classifying plaintext medical documents. This study aims to automatically predict the cause of death from free text forensic autopsy reports by comparing various schemes for feature extraction, term weighing or feature value representation, text classification, and feature reduction.

    METHODS: For experiments, the autopsy reports belonging to eight different causes of death were collected, preprocessed and converted into 43 master feature vectors using various schemes for feature extraction, representation, and reduction. The six different text classification techniques were applied on these 43 master feature vectors to construct a classification model that can predict the cause of death. Finally, classification model performance was evaluated using four performance measures i.e. overall accuracy, macro precision, macro-F-measure, and macro recall.

    RESULTS: From experiments, it was found that that unigram features obtained the highest performance compared to bigram, trigram, and hybrid-gram features. Furthermore, in feature representation schemes, term frequency, and term frequency with inverse document frequency obtained similar and better results when compared with binary frequency, and normalized term frequency with inverse document frequency. Furthermore, the chi-square feature reduction approach outperformed Pearson correlation, and information gain approaches. Finally, in text classification algorithms, support vector machine classifier outperforms random forest, Naive Bayes, k-nearest neighbor, decision tree, and ensemble-voted classifier.

    CONCLUSION: Our results and comparisons hold practical importance and serve as references for future works. Moreover, the comparison outputs will act as state-of-art techniques to compare future proposals with existing automated text classification techniques.

  17. Murty OP
    J Forensic Leg Med, 2009 Jul;16(5):290-6.
    PMID: 19481715 DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2008.12.020
    Domestic maid violence is an assault and coercive behaviour, which mainly includes physical, psychological and at times sexual too, by employer or household members of employer against a person hired as a domestic help. Maid abuse is well known but poorly documented in scientific literature. This is an important global issue. In this article, two illustrated cases of maid abuse are discussed. Their employers allegedly subjected both the victims to physical and psychological trauma. The physical examination of the victims showed poor state of clothing, nutrition, and presence of injuries of different duration. The bruises were irregular to patterned, and were inflicted by beating. Both cases had eczematous contact dermatitis over palms and soles, paronechia, and sub-ungal fungal infection due to unprotected working in wet conditions. In both cases, external ears were deformed like cauliflowers due to repeated trauma. All cases had multiple injuries of varying duration. In this paper, medico-legal and social issues related to maid abuse are also discussed in detail. A possible solution to minimise maid abuse is also suggested. This paper highlights and document maid abuse.
  18. Murty OP
    J Forensic Leg Med, 2009 May;16(4):224-7.
    PMID: 19329081 DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2008.12.027
    A teenager college student was fatally injured by burst tyre air pressure while waiting on a public bus stand to catch a bus to reach her college at Kuala Lumpur. She accidentally came near the wheel while boarding when tube and tyre got burst .The air pressure had blown the girl in the air and she subsequently fell on a rough surface. The iron-locking rim of the wheel acted as a missile and hit the girl. She died on her way to the hospital. A medico-legal autopsy was performed which showed extensive injuries in the cranial and chest cavity. Head had large scalp laceration with diffuse separation and gaping from in the vault region; skull bones were fractured. Chest cavity had extensive rib fractures, lacerated lungs and haemo-thorax while externally there was no obvious injury. It requires intensive care management and screening of the victims. Tyre-blast injuries are not so common. This case exposes the hazard due to burst tyre.
  19. Murty OP
    J Forensic Leg Med, 2009 May;16(4):218-23.
    PMID: 19329080 DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2008.07.010
    A case is presented where confusion arose about skin lesions and whether they were diabetic or electrical in origin. The deceased was a known diabetic and hypertensive man. A middle-aged person in early fifties was found unconscious in the cell and judicial autopsy was performed. He was facing trial for capital punishment of being allegedly involved in drug trafficking and money laundering. He had few marks over his fingers and foot which were considered to be electric marks produced in electric torture. also had fracture of skull and ischemic necrosis of right side of cerebrum; and contrecoup lesions. Findings are documented with photographs of the lesions. The article also depicts photographs of the scene where the victim had fallen and sustained skull fracture.
  20. Murty OP
    J Forensic Leg Med, 2009 Apr;16(3):162-7.
    PMID: 19239970 DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2008.07.009
    A case is presented of a fatal environmental accidental injuries of lightning. A pedestrian was struck by lightning. The macroscopic and microscopic lightning injuries are reviewed.
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