Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increase in the number of abuse cases, with bruising being the most common indicator. Often when a victim comes forward to report an assault, only slight redness may be observed, which may not accurately represent the injury severity. This study focuses on the use of Alternate Light Source (ALS) to detect and document such injuries more effectively.
Following institutional approval, blunt trauma was inflicted on fifty-five healthy participants with no known medical conditions. The participant was seated while a spherical object weighing 465 grams was dropped at a height of 1.5 meters through a vertical tube onto the ventral/anterior surface of the participant’s forearm. The injury site was observed under four different lighting conditions. Findings were documented with photography over specific time intervals over 21 days. A comparison was made between body composition and skin tone on their effect on the visibility of the bruise. Our findings concluded that bruising in females persisted for a longer period, and the optimal wavelength for documentation of bruises is 415 nanometers with a yellow filter.
A blinded study was conducted using the same methodology to assess the accuracy of ALS for detection of bruises. The blinded study results showed an accuracy of 75%. Although the results showed high accuracy, it was determined that the results rely on the researcher’s perception of bruising. Therefore, the results of the blinded study were inconclusive.
Subsequently, peer review of the photographs was conducted to evaluate the effect of bias in detection of bruises. Similar to the results from the blinded study, the observation of the bruise remains highly subjective. The representative sample size was insufficient to provide statistical analysis between the observations of each reviewer. Therefore, the results from the peer review study were also inconclusive.
Although ALS is effective in the documentation of bruises, caution is advised when using ALS to detect bruises as skin pigments, and pre-existing skin conditions may interfere with the interpretation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/46326 |
| Date | 12 June 2023 |
| Creators | Tan, Wan Yu |
| Contributors | Botch-Jones, Sabra |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | Attribution 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
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