Creating images of crime suspects using only the DNA could be the stuff of a movie script, but researchers at Pennsylvania State University have created the technology that turns the script into reality.
More specifically, researcher Mark Shriver and his team developed an application that can produce a 3D representation of individuals who have left a DNA sample at a crime scene and are considered suspects, without any evidence of their external appearance.
The research team used 3D images of about 600 male and female volunteers from a variety of racial and ethnic groups. They then created more than 7,000 digital reference points based on facial features and recorded the exact location of each of these points. The resulting “grids” were then used to measure differences in facial features from person to person.
Then, a computational model was created that could identify how facial features were affected by gender, genes, and race. Thus, the research team discovered that once a person's gender and race were selected, there were 20 genes with 24 versions that could be used to reliably predict the shape and characteristics of a face.
In order to improve the system, the Pennsylvania State University researchers will proceed to expand the application's database, so that more accurate predictions can be made. For this reason, 30,000 reference points will be used, as opposed to the 7,000 in the initial phase of the research.
As reported in a Tech Times article, the results of this application would not be admissible in any court in the United States. However, they could be used to create 3D images that could replace the familiar police sketches of suspects.
