Identifying Fatal Head Injuries on Postmortem Computed Tomography Using Convolutional Neural Network/Deep Learning: A Feasibility Study

Postmortem computed tomography (PMCT) is a relatively recent advancement in forensic pathology practice that has been increasingly used as an ancillary investigation and screening tool. One area of clinical CT imaging that has garnered a lot of research interest recently is the area of “artificial intelligence” (AI), such as in screening and computer-assisted diagnostics. This feasibility study investigated the application of convolutional neural network, a form of deep learning AI, to PMCT head imaging in differentiating fatal head injury from controls. PMCT images of a transverse section of the head at the level of the frontal sinus from 25 cases of fatal head injury were combined with 25 nonhead-injury controls and divided into training and testing datasets. A convolutional neural network was constructed using Keras and was trained against the training data before being assessed against the testing dataset. The results of this study demonstrated an accuracy of between 70% and 92.5%, with difficulties in recognizing subarachnoid hemorrhage and in distinguishing congested vessels and prominent falx from head injury. These results are promising for potential applications as a screening tool or in computer-assisted diagnostics in the future.