Feasiability of Using Evidence-Based Virtopsy to Answer the Possible Clinical and Post-Mortem Questions, in Veterinary Practice

A post-mortem examination is an important part of evidence-based medicine to understand the deterioration of clinical signs or causes of death in euthanized or deceased individual animals or even populations. Post-mortem analysis is aimed at improving clinical treatment and therapy, confirming a suspected diagnosis, managing breeding strategies, and clarifying the forensic cases (e.g., neglect or animal abuse). In analogy to virtopsy in human medicine, diagnostic imaging modalities have been applied in post-mortem veterinary medicine, which we call vetvirtopsy. We hypothesize that vetvirtopsy can be used as a method to answer certain clinical/post-mortem questions to improve the diagnosis reliability. In some questions, vetvirtopsy actually can replace conventional necropsy. This overview study aims to compare vetvirtopsy with conventional necropsy for variable causes of death in animals and to define its possibilities and limitations. Deceased or euthanized pets and wild animals were collected. The imaging techniques, such as post-mortem digital radiography, post-mortem ultrasound, post-mortem computed tomography, and post-mortem magnetic resonance tomography combined with image-guided tissue sampling, were used to address the open questions about clinical symptoms or causes of their death. The case series in this project showed that diagnostic imaging techniques are feasible in answering distinct antemortem and post-mortem clinical and forensic questions. However, there is an interdisciplinary collaboration between diagnostic imaging and sampling under imaging guidance.