Every year, the Forensic Medicine Agency in Stockholm handles 1,400 of the country's 5,500 death investigations.

They are the first of the country's six units to receive a CT scanner, a so-called computer tomograph, which is expected to be fully operational in the spring of 2022. The price tag landed at SEK 10 million.

With the scanner, you can do a virtual autopsy in death investigations.

The technology provides an overview in 3D of skeleton, organs and soft tissue.

In this way, damage can be detected even before the autopsy.

Something that can make it possible for the police to initiate criminal investigations more quickly.

- Once we had a body that was to be autopsied after the weekend, but since we scanned it on Friday and quickly became suspicious of murder, the police could work afterwards during the weekend, says Tobias Gelius, forensic pathologist at the Forensic Medicine Agency in Stockholm and method responsible for computed tomography.

Easier to find bullets

The scan does not replace autopsy, but acts as a complement.

Through it you can detect damage or air accumulations that are difficult to detect at autopsy.

The method can also locate bullets in bullet-damaged bodies.

When a bullet penetrates a body, it can travel around the body, eventually drilling itself into tissue.

It is not easy to find them there, but it is metal in a scan.

- Police technicians are often very interested in finding the projectiles, because they may have a weapon that they want to attach them to, says Tobias Gelius.

One in 50 has been scanned

The technology already exists, but is limited.

The National Board of Forensic Medicine has been allowed to rent in hospitals, but outside the X-ray departments' opening hours, something that has often meant that the pictures and a statement from a doctor come only after the autopsy has been done.

Tobias Gelius estimates that they have been able to scan 20-30 bodies a year.

This corresponds to two percent of the number of death investigations the Stockholm Unit conducts each year.

"Great opportunities"

When the technology is now at the Forensic Medicine Agency in Stockholm, all bodies will be able to be scanned and the images can be of great help in a trial, says chamber prosecutor Carl Mellberg:

- In court, as a prosecutor, I often present a rather complicated material for people who, like myself, are not medically educated, where I see great opportunities to be able to use this technology.