Forensic Sciences Research (Apr 2020)

Research advances in forensic diatom testing

  • Yuanyuan Zhou,
  • Yongjie Cao,
  • Jiao Huang,
  • Kaifei Deng,
  • Kaijun Ma,
  • Tianye Zhang,
  • Liqin Chen,
  • Ji Zhang,
  • Ping Huang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/20961790.2020.1718901
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 5, no. 2
pp. 98 – 105

Abstract

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In forensic practice, it is difficult to determine whether a dead body in the water resulted from drowning or from disposal after death. Diatom testing is currently an important supporting technique for the determination of death by drowning and of drowning sites, even though it is a time-consuming and laborious task. This article reviews the development of diatom testing over the decades and discusses a new method for the potential application of deep learning in diatom testing.

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