HemoSpat News

HemoSpat 1.7 Released

Fri, 02 Aug 2013 08:54:00 -0400

FORident Software is pleased to announce the release of HemoSpat v1.7 for Mac OS X 10.6-10.8 [64-bit Intel], Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

This release includes a new project wizard, more options for the 2D viewer, new and improved exporters, and several new tutorials focused on working with point clouds.

There are many other changes and fixes as well. For download links and a more complete list of changes, please see the release notes.

HemoSpat - New 2D Viewer Options

HemoSpat data integrated with a point cloud using CloudCompare

HemoSpat data integrated with a point cloud using CZ Point Cloud

Special thank you to Eugene Liscio of AI2-3D and the University of Toronto Mississauga Forensic Science program for their help with the point cloud work. We would also like to thank Anna Ristau and Derik White at The CAD Zone for working with us to make the Crime Zone tutorials possible.

As always we look forward to hearing your feedback and suggestions!

Shooting Incident Reconstruction Course

Mon, 29 Jul 2013 15:43:00 -0400

Last month I had the opportunity to attend the Bevel, Gardner, & Associates Shooting Incident Reconstruction (SIR I) course in Omaha Nebraska, USA. It was hosted by the Douglas County Sheriff's Office and taught by Jonathyn Priest and Iris Dalley.

The course was a week long and was made up of attendees from across the US (and two of us representing Canada). It was a very interesting course and I learned a lot! It included a good mixture of classroom instruction, range instruction, and labs/workshops.

In the classroom we took apart cartridges and shotshells to examine the components of different types of ammunition, learned how to process and document a shooting scene, learned the concepts of trajectory analysis and got some hands-on experience with it, and learned about gunshot residue (GSR), stippling, wound tracks, and other topics related to wound dynamics.

Shooting Incident Reconstruction - S&W 40 Cal. Cartridge

Shooting Incident Reconstruction - Remington 12 Guage Shotshell

Shooting Incident Reconstruction - Trajectory Rod Workshop

We spent some time on the range to observe the effects of different types of weapon on various substrates (plate glass, laminated glass, wood, etc), examined ricochets off metal, wood, and and sand, analyzed a mock scene on a car with several bullet defects, and learned about wound dynamics through the shooting of a pig carcass with a handgun, a rifle, and a shotgun.

Shooting Incident Reconstruction - Bullet Holes In Glass

Shooting Incident Reconstruction - Shooting A Car On The Range

Shooting Incident Reconstruction - Bullet Ricochet Off Car Hood

I look forward to learning more about Shooting Incident Reconstruction and how it relates to my current work in Bloodstain Pattern Analysis.

Thanks to Michael Maloney and Jonathyn Priest of Bevel, Gardner, & Associates for organizing things for me!

HemoSpat Workshop At The Canadian Police College

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:08:00 -0400

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to work with some of the bloodstain pattern analysts (BPAs) in my area. Staff Sgt. Gord Lefebvre of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) had approached me to see if we could get together to go over some of the features of HemoSpat. He arranged some space for us at the Canadian Police College (CPC) here in Ottawa to run an impact pattern workshop.

I know some other BPAs in the area, so I invited them to join us. We ended up with analysts from the OPP, Ottawa Police Service, and the Service de Police de la ville de Gatineau. The goal of the workshop was to create an impact pattern with multiple non-orthogonal surfaces, document it, analyze it with HemoSpat, and finally to go over the export capabilities to work with the data in 3D.

We placed a box in a corner and covered it with paper and placed cardboard on the floor.

CPC Bloodstain Workshop - Setup

Gord suited up and created a pattern with one blow of a hammer close to the floor. Ugo Garneau (Ottawa), Vince Brideau (Gatineau), and Rob Lamarche (OPP) helped with stain selection and documentation, while Gord took the photographs.

When looking over the stains which were selected, one of the things that really stood out for me was the difference in quality of bloodstains on the three surfaces: the painted wall, the paper on the box, and the cardboard on the floor. Each of the surfaces interacted with the blood a bit differently.

On the painted surface, the impact of the blood resulted in well-formed edges.

CPC Bloodstain Workshop - Bloodstain On Wall

The paper and cardboard each absorbed some of the blood and resulted in some wicking into the material. This shows how important it is for the analyst to understand the mechanisms of bloodstain formation in order to fit ellipses properly during analysis.

CPC Bloodstain Workshop - Bloodstain On Paper

CPC Bloodstain Workshop - Bloodstain On Cardboard

It was also interesting to note during analysis that using only bloodstains from the box resulted in a large standard deviation in the result. Adding in the stains from the wall and floor really tightened up the result. The final results of the analysis were quite good:

CPC Bloodstain Workshop - Impact Pattern 2D

CPC Bloodstain Workshop - Impact Pattern 3D

It was a very useful and productive day! Thanks to Gord for arranging things and to Ugo, Vince, and Rob for coming out, asking some good questions, and giving feedback. Special thanks to Doug Morris and Julie Goulet of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) who provided us with the training area at CPC.

ACSR Conference 2013 - Atlanta, GA, USA

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 14:54:00 -0500

A couple of weeks ago I attended the 2013 Association for Crime Scene Reconstruction (ACSR) conference in Atlanta, GA, USA. It was a much smaller conference than the previous ones, but that meant that there were a lot more questions and discussions surrounding the presentations. All-in-all, Ross Gardner (Bevel, Gardner, & Associates) did a good job with the content of the conference, though being stuck at an airport hotel wasn't exactly ideal...

Some highlights for me were:

The Laser Trajectories workshop with Michael Maloney (no relation) and Jon Priest (both from Bevel, Gardner, & Associates)
Cory Latham's (Kansas Bureau of Investigation) discussion of staged crime scenes
John Paul Jones II's (National Institute of Standards and Technology) presentation NIST Research, Guidelines, and Tools that Support the Forensic Science Practitioner
David Dustin's (Dustin Productions) workshop Crime Scene Virtual Recreation: An Overview From Capture to Deliverable
Jon Priest also presented an interesting double homicide case from Colorado

Incidentally, Michael Maloney and Jon Priest from Bevel, Gardner, & Associates are offering 40-hour courses on Shooting Incident Reconstruction in Nebraska (June 2013) and Colorado (July 2013). If you're interested, you can find details on their website.

Shooting Incident Reconstruction - Laser Trajectories

The next ACSR conference is being organized by Cele Rossi (Montgomery County Sheriff's Office) in Houston, TX, USA. It's already taking shape and looks like it's going to be a great lineup of talks and workshops. Hope to see you there in Feb 2014!

Andy Maloney
Lead Developer, HemoSpat

An Introduction to Building 3D Crime Scene Models Using SketchUp

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 13:28:00 -0500

An Introduction to Building 3D Crime Scene Models Using SketchUp, an article which I co-authored with Elissa St. Clair (Naval Criminal Investigative Service) and Albert Schade (Berks County District Attorney’s Office, Forensic Services Unit), was published in the Fall 2012 Journal of the Association for Crime Scene Reconstruction.

The purpose of the article is to try to encourage those doing crime scene reconstruction work to consider SketchUp as a tool due to its ease-of-use, affordability (free!), and the wealth of models available in the 3D Warehouse. With SketchUp, it is possible to get a reasonable 3D model from a 2D crime scene sketch without being a professional modeller or spending months learning the tools.

A Crime Scene In SketchUp (No Perspective)

A Crime Scene In SketchUp (With Perspective)

In the article we give an example from a real crime scene and show step-by-step how we constructed the 3D model from the 2D sketch. At the end we show the resulting 3D model side-by-side with the crime scene photos.

The abstract of the paper is on our Bloodstain Research page, and the article and supplemental material are also available for download.

If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to post in the Bloodstain Pattern Analysis forum.

IABPA Conference 2012 - Edinburgh, Scotland

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 11:58:00 -0500

Last week I attended the IABPA conference in Edinburgh, Scotland. The conference organizers Amanda Pirie and Chris Gannicliffe [Scottish Police Services Authority (SPSA)] and their team did a fantastic job. It was held in a great, historical venue - The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh - and the schedule and talks were quite good. They also planned a couple of amazing evenings. The first was a reception with the Lord Advocate in The Great Hall at Edinburgh Castle. The second event was dinner and a céilidh at the Ghillie Dhu. Very impressed that everyone who stayed until the wee hours of the morning still made it to the conference on Wednesday morning!

Some of the presentation and workshop highlights for me were:

Pump Up The (Blood) Volume: Simulated Projected Blood Patterns using the 'Arterial Pump' workshop presented by Jo Millington [Manlove Forensics] and Gillian Leak [Principal Forensic Services]
BPA in Road Traffic Collision Investigation – a Forgotten Art? presented by Chris Gannicliffe [Scottish Police Services Authority]
Chemical Treatment of Footwear Impressions in Blood on Fabric presented by Kevin Farrugia [University of Abertay]
Case Presentation: The murders of Angelika Kluk and Vicky Hamilton presented by Carol Weston and Nicola Clayson [Scottish Police Services Authority]

Special thanks to Craig Severin and Iain Harkness [SPSA] for keeping the céilidh evening flowing...

This conference set the bar pretty high for future conferences!

It has yet to be decided where the next European conference is going to be held, but there was talk of... Rome, Italy...

Andy Maloney
Lead Developer, HemoSpat

IABPA Conference 2012 - Tucson, USA

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 11:56:00 -0400

I attended the 2012 IABPA conference in Tucson, AZ, USA last week. I was fortunate enough to have been invited to present my work on cast-off visualization as well as a workshop on HemoSpat. Thanks to Norm Reeves [BPA Consulting] for all his work organizing the conference and for inviting me to present.

This conference had a great mix of research, case, and other presentations. It's encouraging to see so many others presenting their work. I was particularly glad to see Céline Nicloux [Institute De Recherche Criminelle De La Gendarmerie Nationale] and Elisabeth Williams [Environmental Science & Research] present research on cast-off that fit so well with what I'm doing with it.

There was a more international flavour at the conference this year which was refreshing. People came from Korea, Japan, South Africa, The Philippines, France, The Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, UK, and of course the USA and Canada.

The standout talks for me this time were: The Characteristics of Blood On "Wicking" Fabrics presented by Rich Tewes [Pioneer Forensics], Paulette Sutton's [private consultant] Proving a Priest Killed a Nun ("Can I get a Holy Crap?!"), Bloodstain Pattern Documentation: A new Approach presented by Michael Perkins [Las Vegas Metro Police Department] (his recommendations are exactly the direction HemoSpat is headed) and André Hendrix's [Politie Zeeland] presentation about the shooting of Prince William of Orange titled A 400 Year Old Royal Crime Scene.

Even the general meeting was interesting this time...

Thanks to André Hendrix, Klaas Vervolet, and Jos Albers for participating in the Adopt-a-Canadian program. We had fun running around the Tucson area after the conference.

Next stop: Edinburgh.

Andy Maloney
Lead Developer, HemoSpat

HemoSpat 1.6 Released

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 12:01:00 -0400

FORident Software is pleased to announce the release of HemoSpat v1.6 for Mac OS X 10.5-10.7 [64-bit Intel], Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

The larger changes include a new interactive 2D viewer, a new tutorial on working with SketchUp, Mac OS X 10.7 support, and improvements to the COLLADA (.dae) exporter.

There are many other changes and fixes as well. For download links and a more complete list of changes, please see the release notes.

New 2D Viewer

We look forward to hearing any feedback from you!

Visualization of Cast-off Patterns Using 3D Modelling Software

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:36:00 -0500

When an investigator encounters a cast-off pattern at a crime scene, they can usually get a sense of the general location and orientation of the swing which created the pattern. This is very difficult to document and almost impossible to demonstrate to others who have not attended the scene.

This research is about trying to find a way to capture that piece of the scene in a way that will let investigators communicate it to others. The article, titled Visualization of Cast-off Patterns Using 3D Modelling Software, was published in the Fall 2011 issue of the Journal of the Association for Crime Scene Reconstruction.

The abstract of the paper is on our Bloodstain Research page, and the article and supplemental material are also available for download.

If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to post in the Bloodstain Pattern Analysis forum.

HemoSpat v1.5 Released

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 15:41:00 -0400

FORident Software is pleased to announce the release of HemoSpat v1.5 for Mac OS X 10.5 [Intel], Mac OS X 10.6 [Intel], Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

The larger changes include the ability to use the left-handed coordinate system, the addition of an experiment mode, the addition of an auto-save feature, and more flexibility when dealing with downward moving stains. We also added many options to the DXF exporter and the 2D Viewer.

There are many other changes and fixes as well. For download links and a more complete list of changes, please see the release notes.

We look forward to hearing any feedback from you!