10 June 2009

Local trusts help ensure the UK is prepared for any eventuality

***IMPORTANT NOTE: CANCELLATION OF THE FOLLOWING EVENT***

LOCAL TRUSTS HELP ENSURE THE UK IS PREPARED FOR ANY EVENTUALITY

The visit of trustees of the Aberbrothock Skea Trust, and subsequent presentation of cheque, to the Centre of Anatomy & Human Identification, University of Dundee will now take place at a later date to be confirmed.

PHOTO OPPORTUNITY: 12pm, Thursday, June 11th, 2009 at the Wellcome Trust Building, Dow Street, Dundee.

***Note: The Aberbrothock Skea Trust representatives attending the event have changed due to unforeseen circumstances***

Trustee of the Aberbrothock Skea Trust John Smart will present a £3000 cheque to Professor Sue Black, Director of Centre of Anatomy & Human Identification, University of Dundee and Dr Roos Eisma, Postdoctoral Researcher.

The University of Dundee’s renowned Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification has been selected as the forensic anthropology partner in the UK facilty for remote reporting in the event of a CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear) incident which causes mass fatalities.

Mass fatalities, whether caused by a natural disaster, industrial accident or terrorist attack, occur unexpectedly. When such an event happens, a quick and effective response is essential to deal with the recovery and identification of the deceased.

The current project at the University of Dundee focuses on incidents where the remains are contaminated as a result of a CBRN incident. While a 'dirty bomb' attack has not yet taken place in the UK, this is something for which the Home Office is preparing and is putting the infrastructure in place to respond to such incidents.

Further fundamental research must be undertaken to underpin the Centre’s approach to any such mass fatality event, and three local trusts have provided financial support to allow this research to take place.

The Arbroath-based Aberbrothock Skea Trust, Dundee’s Lethendy Trust and a third organisation which preferred to remain anonymous agreed to help the University further its groundbreaking and internationally recognised work in this field.

The three organisations are donating a total of £7000 towards helping meet the salary costs of postdoctoral researcher Dr Roos Eisma and an additional Master’s student who will be appointed later this year.

John Smart, trustee of the Aberbrothock Skea Trust will visit the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification on Thursday 11 June 2009 at 12 noon, to meet Professor Sue Black and present her with a cheque for £3000.

Professor Black expressed her gratitude to members of all three trusts for their generosity, saying 'The underpinning of such important ventures by reliable science is absolutely essential to ensure that we are serving justice and the deceased to the best of our abilities.'

As a first step, the Home Office has organised mobile CT scanners that can be at the scene of the incident within a matter of hours. By scanning the remains, the risk exposure to professionals involved in the aftermath of the incident can be minimised as, instead of handling remains at the scene itself, the scanned images will be examined remotely.

The scientific response to such an incident will be co-ordinated by FIMAG (Forensic Imaging Group), the core organising scientific group. The remote reporting will be undertaken at Leicester University, dental reporting in Cardiff and the anthropology aspect being undertaken by CAHID in Dundee.

However, some fundamental underpinning research must be undertaken before full confidence in the approach can be guaranteed.

Dr Eisma’s research asks how accurate can we be in our assessment of the identify the victims if we must view CT scans instead of the actual remains from these types of disasters?

The techniques traditionally used in forensic anthropology have been developed and evaluated on actual material and not on virtual images - it is not known how well methodologies transfer between one medium and the other. There has been no research to assess if the reliability and accuracy are comparable to the original tried and tested methods.

Dr Eisma explained, 'This is an area that has not been investigated yet so there are many outstanding questions. We try to translate all the tasks we would do on "real" remains to an image on a computer screen.'

'For example, we would normally measure the length of the femur with an osteometric board. How should we manipulate the CT scans and make on-screen measurements? How can we identify a landmark on the bone, for example a ridge used in a measurement, on a scan and be sure this is the same location?'

Results have to be reliable, precise and repeatable. Identification of victims is incredibly important for relatives, as well as for legal reasons. Results can be questioned in court so findings must be backed up with solid research and the technique must produce results that will be admissible in court.

In the past two years, the University of Dundee have made a number of steps towards addressing the core of this research, and this is the work which has been partially funded by the local trusts.

John Smart said the Aberbrothock Skea Trust recognised the worldwide reputation of Professor Black and her colleagues and were delighted to be able to provide assistance.

He said, 'Clearly there are significant scientific developments taking place regarding the recovery, and the off-site investigation, of human remains. The Aberbrothock Skea Trust is pleased that we have been able to offer support for such worthwhile and specialist research.'

Notes:
Dr Eisma’s research (whose salary has been part funded by the Aberbrothock Skea Trust, the Lethendy trust and an anonymous trust) has resulted in;

• A contribution to a project in which measurements on CT scans of amputated legs were compared with measurements of the actual bones. This resulted in the paper:
  Robinson, C., Eisma, R., Morgan, B., Jeffery, A., Graham, E.A.M., Black, S., Rutty, G.N. (2008) Anthropological Measurement of Lower Limb and Foot Bones Using Multi-Detector Computed Tomography. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 53 (6), pp.1289-1295
• Participation in Operation Torch, a rehearsal exercise based on a terrorist scenario, which saw scans were sent to Dundee via internet and analysed, trying to answer questions such as: which bones and other tissues are present, and are they all human? This identified a number of areas for further research, such as procedures required to develop for analysing the CT scans. It also highlighted some of the difficulties in remotely collaborating in a major incident.
• Honours student Adam McLean undertook a research project in which a number of measurements of real femora were compared with the same measurements done on the CT scans of these bones. In this project, two different approaches to taking the measurements on the scans which involved different ways of visualising the bone on the screen. We also compared if certain types of measurements are easier than others. The results are currently being prepared for publication.

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