%0 Journal Article
%T Handheld hyperspectral imaging as a tool for the post-mortem interval estimation of human skeletal remains.
%A Schmidt VM
%A Zelger P
%A Wöss C
%A Fodor M
%A Hautz T
%A Schneeberger S
%A Huck CW
%A Arora R
%A Brunner A
%A Zelger B
%A Schirmer M
%A Pallua JD
%J Heliyon
%V 10
%N 4
%D 2024 Feb 29
%M 38375262
%F 3.776
%R 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e25844
%X In forensic medicine, estimating human skeletal remains' post-mortem interval (PMI) can be challenging. Following death, bones undergo a series of chemical and physical transformations due to their interactions with the surrounding environment. Post-mortem changes have been assessed using various methods, but estimating the PMI of skeletal remains could still be improved. We propose a new methodology with handheld hyperspectral imaging (HSI) system based on the first results from 104 human skeletal remains with PMIs ranging between 1 day and 2000 years. To differentiate between forensic and archaeological bone material, the Convolutional Neural Network analyzed 65.000 distinct diagnostic spectra: the classification accuracy was 0.58, 0.62, 0.73, 0.81, and 0.98 for PMIs of 0 week-2 weeks, 2 weeks-6 months, 6 months-1 year, 1 year-10 years, and >100 years, respectively. In conclusion, HSI can be used in forensic medicine to distinguish bone materials >100 years old from those <10 years old with an accuracy of 98%. The model has adequate predictive performance, and handheld HSI could serve as a novel approach to objectively and accurately determine the PMI of human skeletal remains.