Forensic differential diagnosis of ethanol and carbon monoxide poisoning by diffused tomography of polarization images of polycrystalline blood films

Abstract

This work is devoted to the study of the possibilities of applying the method of differential polarimetric microscopy with algorithmic reproduction of fluctuations of linear and circular birefringence of polycrystalline component of human blood films in forensic practice for differential diagnosis of alcohol and carbon monoxide poisoning. Aim of the work. Development of a set of forensic objective criteria for the possibility of differential diagnosis of ethanol and CO poisoning by diffuse tomography of polarization images of polycrystalline films of human blood. Materials and methods. The object of the study were polycrystalline blood films obtained from 98 corpses of both sexes aged 18 to 70 years. The cause of death was acute ethanol poisoning (n=36), acute CO poisoning (n=32) and biological tissue samples from those who died of coronary heart disease (n=30) were used for control. The studies were performed by diffuse tomography of linear and circular birefringence of fluctuations of the polycrystalline structure of human blood films. Results. The results of statistical analysis of data of algorithmic polarization reproduction of coordinate distributions of linear birefringence of fluctuation of albumin-globulin polycrystalline networks and circular birefringence of optically active chiral molecules, revealed a high level (statistical reliability p1; p2; p1;2<0,05) of diagnostic efficiency of forensic digital differentiation of blood films samples from people died of coronary heart disease, ethanol and carbon monoxide poisoning based on the calculation of a set of statistical moments of the 1-4-th orders. Conclusions. The possibility of statistically significant (p1; p2<0,05) differentiation of cases of ethanol and CO poisoning by diffuse tomography of linear and circular birefringence of fluctuations of the polycrystalline component of the blood films has been established. The operational characteristics of the diagnostic power of the method corresponding to the excellent (92 % and 97 %) level are determined.