Forensic investigation is a cornerstone of the justice system, ensuring accountability, safety, and public trust. This project explores immersive analytics and spatial computing to enhance forensic pathology workflow—enabling experts to visualise and interpret complex medical imaging data in new, more intuitive ways.

Developed through a PhD research program at Monash University, in partnership with forensic pathologists and government forensic services from the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, the system demonstrates how extended-reality (XR) technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance the quality, speed, and reliability of autopsy procedures and reporting.

Key Features

• Immersive 3D Autopsy Analysis
  • Uses mixed-reality headsets to display CT and MRI scans as interactive 3D anatomy at life-size scale.
  • Allows forensic experts to walk around, inspect, and annotate injuries or anatomical structures with natural gestures.
  • Supports multi-user sessions for training, consultation, or peer review.
• AI-Assisted Report Generation
  • Integrates generative AI with the immersive interface to automatically draft structured forensic reports based on user annotations and voice dictation.
  • Reduces documentation time while maintaining compliance with forensic reporting standards.
  • Provides a transparent link between the visualised evidence and the generated text.

Impact and Future Potential

• Improved efficiency in autopsy workflows through streamlined analysis and reporting.
• Enhanced training and collaboration, allowing students and professionals to share immersive forensic cases remotely.
• High fidelity and reproducibility, ensuring evidence is clearly documented and easily reviewed.
• Scalable potential for integration with national forensic and medical training programs.
• This research exemplifies Australia’s leadership in combining AI, extended reality, and data visualisation to strengthen justice, education, and healthcare outcomes.
• Working with the University of the Philippines, the Philippines and Australian Governments to develop XR training and remote support for a new Forensic Medicine Institute being established in the Philippines.
• Many developing countries have minimal forensics capabilities - there is an opportunity for XR and AI technology to fill this void: first in training, but then also to be integrated into new forensic investigation workflows.

Publications and Media

• ABC news report: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-03/technology-sees-virtual-autopsies-outnumber-invasive-procedures/101920654
• Pooryousef, V., Cordeil, M., Besançon, L., Hurter, C., Dwyer, T., & Bassed, R. (2023, April). Working with forensic practitioners to understand the opportunities and challenges for mixed-reality digital autopsy. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1-15). DOI: 10.1145/3544548.3580768
• Pooryousef, V., Cordeil, M., Besançon, L., Bassed, R., & Dwyer, T. (2024). Collaborative Forensic Autopsy Documentation and Supervised Report Generation Using a Hybrid Mixed-Reality Environment and Generative AI. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. DOI: 10.1109/TVCG.2024.3456212
• PhD Thesis: Immersive Forensic Investigation. DOI: 10.26180/30052255.v1