Evidence acquisition, interpretation and preservation are essential parts of forensic case work that make a standardized documentation process fundamental. The most commonly used method for the documentation and interpretation of superficial wounds is a combination of two modalities: two-dimensional (2D) photography for evidence preservation and real-life examination for wound analysis. As technologies continue to develop, 2D photography is being enhanced with three-dimensional (3D) documentation technology. In our study, we compared the real-life examination of superficial wounds using four different technical documentation and visualization methods.

To test the different methods, a mannequin was equipped with several injury stickers, and then the different methods were applied. A total of 42 artificial injury stickers were documented in regard to orientation, form, color, size, wound borders, wound corners and suspected mechanism of injury for the injury mechanism. As the gold standard, superficial wounds were visually examined by two board-certified forensic pathologists directly on the mannequin. These results were compared to an examination using standard 2D forensic photography; 2D photography using the multicamera system Botscan©, which included predefined viewing positions all around the body; and 3D photogrammetric reconstruction based on images visualized both on screen and in a virtual reality (VR) using a head-mounted display (HMD).

The results of the gold standard examination showed that the two forensic pathologists had an inter-reader agreement ranging from 69% for the orientation and 11% for the size of the wounds. A substantial portion of the direct visual documentation showed only a partial overlap, especially for the items of size and color, thereby prohibiting the statistical comparison of these two items. A forest plot analysis of the remaining six items showed no significant difference between the methods. We found that among the forensic pathologists, there was high variability regarding the vocabulary used for the description of wound morphology, which complicated the exact comparison of the two documentations of the same wound.

There were no significant differences for any of the four methods compared to the gold standard, thereby challenging the role of real-life examination and 2D photography as the most reliable documentation approaches. Further studies with real injuries are necessary to support our evaluation that technical examination methods involving multicamera systems and 3D visualization for whole-body examination might be a valid alternative in future forensic documentation.

证据获取、解释和保存是法医案例工作的重要组成部分，它使标准化的文档过程成为基础。记录和解释浅表伤口最常用的方法是结合两种方式：用于证据保存的二维 (2D) 摄影和用于伤口分析的真实生活检查。随着技术的不断发展，3D (3D) 文档技术正在增强 2D 摄影。在我们的研究中，我们比较了使用四种不同技术文档和可视化方法对浅表伤口的真实检查。

为了测试不同的方法，一个人体模型配备了几个伤害贴纸，然后应用了不同的方法。共记录了42张人工损伤贴，涉及方向、形状、颜色、大小、伤口边界、伤口角和疑似损伤机制。为伤害机制。作为金标准，表面伤口由两名获得委员会认证的法医病理学家直接在人体模型上进行目视检查。这些结果与使用标准 2D 法医摄影进行的检查进行了比较；使用多相机系统 Botscan© 进行 2D 摄影，其中包括预定义的身体周围的观看位置；以及基于使用头戴式显示器 (HMD) 在屏幕上和虚拟现实 (VR) 中可视化的图像的 3D 摄影测量重建。

金标准检查的结果显示，两位法医病理学家的读者间一致度从 69% 的方向和 11%的伤口大小不等。大部分直接视觉文件仅显示部分重叠，特别是对于尺寸和颜色的项目，从而禁止对这两个项目进行统计比较。其余六个项目的森林图分析显示方法之间没有显着差异。我们发现，在法医病理学家中，用于描述伤口形态的词汇存在很大差异，这使得对同一伤口的两个文档进行精确比较变得复杂。

与黄金标准相比，这四种方法中的任何一种都没有显着差异，从而挑战了现实生活检查和 2D 摄影作为最可靠的记录方法的作用。需要对真实伤害进行进一步研究，以支持我们的评估，即涉及多相机系统和全身检查 3D 可视化的技术检查方法可能是未来法医文件中的有效替代方案。