Heather Edgar, forensic anthropologist at The University of New Mexico Office of Medical Investigator (OMI) and professor of Anthropology, has been awarded a grant from the National Institute of Justice, according to a department press release..
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One of the first steps in pursuing justice in a homicide or missing person case is identifying the deceased person. A tool created by researchers at the University of New Mexico is making that process easier. The New Mexico Decedent Image Database includes 150 million images of whole-body CT scans. The database is the first of its kind in the nation. The scans help both forensic investigators and health care practitioners learn more about identifying unknown bodies, especially Indigenous people. Dr. Heather Edgar is a forensic anthropologist at the Office of the Medical Investigator and the creator of the database.
DR. HEATHER EDGAR: The database includes over 15,000 individuals. And there s not another database like this that includes whole-body CT scans of that many individuals, especially ones that are so well documented. So because of that, there s been a lot of interest across the world. There has been research done on the effects of cancer drugs, improving automobi
Project helps improve identification of Native American remains and resolve missing persons cases By Mary Beth King July 12, 2021
U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) visited the Office of Medical Investigator (OMI) at The University of New Mexico recently to see the work being done by forensic anthropologist Heather Edgar and her team to improve the identification of Native American remains and resolve missing persons cases.
Edgar worked with many at UNM to create the New Mexico Decedent Image Database (NMDID), which includes thousands of whole-body CT scans. Each scan contains about 10,000 images of a single body. The scans are valuable in many research areas, including developing methods to help make positive identifications of unknown deceased people. Anthropologists compare unknown individuals to data about known individuals, narrowing the pool of missing persons for comparison using estimates of sex, age, and other characteristics. But in some cases, such as for Nativ