Prof Thali and his team carried out an autopsy on the woman, but not the kind we're used to seeing in television shows such as CSI and countless police dramas. This was a scalpel-free, virtual autopsy, or "virtopsy" — a radical new approach to forensic investigation, in which Professor Thali is one of the pioneers.

The researchers are already pioneers of virtual autopsies, or "virtopsies", which use non-invasive imaging of a body inside and out rather than the radical post-mortem surgery typically used to determine cause of death. … Their virtopsies combine 3D imaging of a body's surface with a CT scan of its interior anatomy. The result is a faithful, high-resolution virtual double of the corpse.

In this project called Virtopsy, we used the newest generation of multidetector row CT (MSCT) and a 1.5 Tesla MR scanner.