Reconstruction of a real car-pedestrian-accident. Part I: Generating an individual digital topographic image of the victim

The aim of forensic biomechanics is the reconstruction of traumatic events based on the pathological findings in the victim's morphology, the accident traces and the car damages. The use of forensic documentation tools (e.g. Streifenlichttopometrie) enables 3-dimensional and proportional accurate documentation of the victim's body, of its injuries and of the car damages with submillimeter precision. The generated topographic image serves as input for a multi-body system model of the victim. It allows further to determine exactly the contact points between car and victim for a computer simulated dynamical reconstruction of the impact situation. In the case of an accident involving a car and a pedestrian the generation and application of computer aided 3-dimensional reconstruction models are shown.