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Virtopsy® applies technologies which can be used to document forensically relevant findings in 3D. The most important tools for daily routine use are:
Virtobot setup (early and latest stage) in the Virtopsy examination room
Description Virtobot®
Heart lung machine, used for post mortem CT angiography.
Six-row multislice CT-scanner (Siemens Somatom 6) with flouroscopy package and two external, network connected Leonardo workstations.
3D optical surface scanner - The GOM ATOS III 3D digitizer is an optical measuring machine, based on the principle of triangulation. Projected fringe patterns are observed with two cameras. The data are transferred to a high end PC. 3D coordinates for each camera pixel are calculated with high precision. A polygon mesh of the object is created. The 3D surface scanner is mounted on the robot arm for an automatic surface documentation of the whole body.
The Virtobot biopsy module is mounted onto the Virtobot system and allows for precise needle placement. The trajectories are planned by using CT volume data sets. The placement procedure works in conjunction with an optical surgical navigation system, similar to the ones used in neuro- or orthopaedic surgery. The navigation system constists of a computer system, a touchscreen and an optical tracking system (Polaris). This type of needle placement can be used for minimally invasive post mortem tissue and liquid sampling.
Magnetic Resonance (MR) is a medical imaging method, based on the magnetic properties of tissues, providing excellent tissue detail, in organs such as the brain, heart, abdominal organs, and other soft tissues. In November, 2009, the Center of Forensic Imaging and Virtopsy went live with a Siemens Magnetom/Symphony (Siemens, Germany), the first 1.5 Tesla TIM (Total Imaging Matrix) MR dedicated solely to forensic imaging.
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