Investigation of Temperature Dependence of Time-Of-Death Estimation Based on 1H-MRS Measurements in Sheep Heads

Michael Ith¹, Eva Scheurer², Roland Kreis¹, Michael Thali², Richard Dirnhofer², Chris Boesch¹

At room temperature estimation of the postmortem interval can be done using 1H-MRS to measure concentration changes of various metabolites during brain decomposition. The presented study investigated sheep brain decomposition at 4 different ambient temperatures between 4 and 26 degrees Celsius by means of 1H-MRS. Before the onset of bacterial decomposition, eleven metabolites showed linear time courses and were parameterized accordingly. The temperature-dependency of seven metabolites showed similar behavior. For a total of eight different metabolites it was possible to describe the concentration changes at all temperatures with a single analytical function that includes the time postmortem and ambient temperature simultaneously.