In criminal investigations, postmortem interval (PMI) is important information to be inferred in homicide investigations, as well as the focus and the difficulty in forensic pathology research. Because the DNA content in different tissues is relatively constant and shows changes regularly with the extension of PMI, it has become a research hotspot of PMI estimation. This paper reviews the recent progress of PMI estimation technologies including DNA-based single cell gel electrophoresis, image analysis, flow cytometry, real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR and high-throughput sequencing, hoping to provide references for forensic medicine practice and scientific research.
在刑事侦查中，死亡时间是命案调查中需要获取的重要信息，也是法医病理学研究的重点和难点问题。由于不同组织细胞内DNA的含量较为恒定且会随着死亡时间的延长呈现有规律的变化，故成为死亡时间推断的研究热点。本文综述了近年来基于DNA的单细胞凝胶电泳、计算机图像分析、流式细胞术、实时荧光定量PCR以及高通量测序等关于死亡时间推断技术的研究进展，以期为法医学实践与科学研究提供参考。.
Keywords: deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA); flow cytometry (FCM); forensic pathology; image analysis; postmortem interval; real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR); review; single cell gel electrophoresis.