[Assessment of the possibilities of application of the thermovision technique in medico-legal diagnosis. Theoretical basis].

The authors in their work wish to prove that technological advancement of modern thermovision technique opens for forensic medicine, as an applied science, new diagnostic possibilities, especially in the scope of the post-mortem examinations. In the past, some attempts were already undertaken to apply thermovision techniques in forensic medicine, those tests, however, were not put in the everyday medical-legal practice. Most of the factors which have an influence in decreasing the value of thermograph tests are not present while biological material is tested post-mortem, therefore, paradoxically, natural elimination of obstacles occurs in such cases, which allows for medical-legal post-mortem diagnostics based on thermograph images. In particular, the most promising is active dynamic thermography which is based on the analysis of thermograms' sequence registered during transitional thermal processes in the examined object (heating or cooling of the object), which is stimulated by an external heat source, and the object's response to this stimulation is a change of the temperature which function in time determines its internal structure. Pathological and injury changes and their results in the form of structural damages of tissues lead to thermal conductivity and capacity which can be noticeable in a thermovision test. There are, then, no theoretical obstacles to the use of active dynamic thermography in post-mortem tests of tissues to evaluate their structure. With today's technological progress, it should be expected that in the near future sensitivity of thermovision appliances will significantly influence the increase of the specificity of obtained images. It can not be excluded that thermography methods could become a back-up method or even an alternative for other imagining methods.