| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,000,000)
Fiscal Year 2005: ¥500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000)
Fiscal Year 2004: ¥2,500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,500,000)
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| Research Abstract |
We performed automatic continuous monitoring of rectal and ambient temperatures using button-type thermo data loggers in autopsy cases. The button-type data loggers (SEC-CD16TB, Sanyo) have a battery-powered memory that can record 2048 temperature readings. The measurement intervals and other initial settings are determined by computer software, and the measurements were taken at 5-minute intervals for this study. At autopsy, the data loggers were retrieved and recorded temperature graphs were produced. In the Miyagi prefecture, this method has been used since July 2004. For 21 months, 152 cases were monitored from 375 autopsies, and 103 were available. We estimated the postmortem interval (time of death) using monitoring results in many cases. In one case, the button-type data logger was not discharged regardless of how the body was moved after the device was inserted into the rectum. In two other cases, the cooling curves of the rectal temperature readings clearly followed changes in ambient cooling conditions. The advantages of the tested devices are their small size (diameter, 17.4 mm; thickness, 5.9 mm) and ease of insertion into the rectum, requiring no special skills. Many temperature-based algorithms to determine time of death have been developed, and as a matter of course, the temperature values must be accurate and reliable. Ensuring the validity of each temperature reading requires continuous data from an internal data logger. Even if a two exponential formula is used, the extraction from these sequence data is recommended to get more reliable estimation. Button-type data loggers are suitable for this purpose, and this study demonstrates their application in practical cases. We present application to help introduce this method to other areas.
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