The basics of disaster victim identification

Mass fatality incidents can occur due to an environmental, medical, vehicle, industrial or terrorist event. They can be major, mass or catastrophic in size and generally involve large numbers of victims. Identification of these victims is of upmost importance in these situations for legal and compassionate reasons. Whilst radiography has been used for this purpose since 1949, it has since been suggested that post-mortem computed tomography (PMCT) could provide a more rapid and logistically beneficial modality-reducing the number of on-site personnel and minimizing the number of different imaging modalities required. The International Society of Forensic Radiology and Imaging (ISFRI), who include disaster victim identification (DVI) as one of their six key areas of development, support this idea. The DVl sub-group of the ISFRI supports the use of radiology including PMCT in mass Fatality responses through the DVl group's published positional statements. This review will discuss the basics of disaster victim identification and the role that radiology has in it, both in the past and in the future. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.