Forensic sciences

Low-cost computing power and capture devices, as well as advances in machine learning tools, allow for rapid and affordable photogrammetry tools.  These tools dramatically improve crime scene documentation by producing highly accurate, three-dimensional representations of crime scenes in high resolution.  

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on October 14, 2021.

The Association of State and Territorial Health Agencies (ASTHO) will provide an overview of the Project ECHO model and how the model has been adapted to create a supportive learning community of coroners and medical examiners dedicated to improving the investigation and certification of overdose deaths. 

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on October 7, 2021. 

Sam Quinones is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist and an international award-winning author of four books of narrative nonfiction. Quinones’ latest book, The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth, will be featured in this FTCoE webinar celebrating National Forensic Science Week.

This webinar will provide an opportunity to discuss some of the post-SWGTREAD considerations for articulating findings (interpretations, limitations, opinions, and results) as well as a platform to exchange thoughts, consider suggested conclusion structures, and observe examples related to articulating footwear evidence conclusions.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on September 30, 2021. 

Data availability is the cornerstone of progression of any scientific inquiry. For forensic anthropologists, the data sources are limited, as they must be contextually appropriate (temporal, geographical, etc.) for study and application in forensic research on human variation. In this webinar, the presenters will discuss The Forensic Anthropology Database for Assessing Methods Accuracy (FADAMA), a database that offers access to unique, innovative, and nuanced data. The webinar will cover the database’s goals, ethical considerations, research potential, data accessibility, and more.

When processing a digital image for scientific analysis and comparison, there are proper procedures that must be followed.  This is to ensure the processed image’s admissibility in court and to provide the highest level of clarity and detail possible.  Adobe Photoshop provides many tools for processing digital images; however, there are some tools that should not be used in forensic digital image processing.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on August 5, 2021.

Analyzing, comparing, and evaluating forensic digital images relies on understanding two essential elements: image quality and image clarity.  Resolution provides image quality, while bit depth provides clarity between the details in an image. It is important to understand how image quality and clarity can affect the probative value of a forensic digital image as well as an examiner’s ability to accurately analyze those images. 

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on August 3, 2021.
 

This webinar will provide an overview of overdose fatality reviews (OFRs) with a specific focus on engaging partnerships with coroners, medical examiners, and medicolegal death investigators.  The presenters will highlight OFRs that have been implemented by engaging the medicolegal death investigation system and will discuss challenges and recommendations associated with implementing an OFR. The webinar will consist of three presentations on OFRs highlighting a county-level, a rural community, and a state-wide approach.

Over the last ten years, numerous novel psychoactive substances (NPS) have emerged in the recreational drug supply. Upon synthesis or discovery, each of these drugs has been given a name other than its IUPAC chemical name, primarily for ease of communication. This has resulted in various naming convention for NPS, sometimes multiple within a given subclass. This webinar is aimed at tackling the naming conventions for NPS and the associated challenges encountered along the way.

Microhaplotypes (microhaps) are biomarkers fewer than 300 nucleotides long that display multiple allelic combinations. The main advantages of microhaps over conventional short tandem repeats (STRs) include the 1) absence of stutter, 2) same-size alleles within each locus, 3) lower mutation rate, and 4) ancestry informative alleles. These forensically relevant loci can yield a power of discrimination similar to STRs while enhancing human identification (HID), mixture deconvolution, and biogeographic ancestry prediction.

LatentSleuth is a novel software tool set designed for (and with direct feedback from) latent print examiners. The toolset includes a small-scale automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS) matcher that leverages a novel matching algorithm that calculates a warp between a latent print image and a given reference print image. This webinar will demonstrate a comprehensive quantification of a latent images entire structure and how that quantification is exploited in a commercially available workstation for latent print examination. 

In the sixth and final webinar, participants will be introduced to the use of PMCT in the investigation of a variety of unnatural deaths not discussed in previous webinars.  Topics include overdose deaths, select asphyxial mechanisms of death, and sharp force injury.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on May 18, 2021. 

In the fifth webinar, participants will be introduced to the use of PMCT in the investigation of natural deaths.  At the New Mexico OMI, a PMCT scan may be used to rule out trauma in apparently natural deaths, or to confirm a natural cause of death.  Depending on investigative details (circumstances, age, and medical history), and the PMCT findings, pathologists may choose to perform an external exam or a full autopsy.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on May 11, 2021.

In the third webinar, participants will be introduced to the use of PMCT for examining decedents with gunshot wounds, both homicidal and self-inflicted.  At the New Mexico OMI, a PMCT scan is performed in virtually all gunshot wound (GSW) related deaths.  In cases of suspected homicide or suspicious suicides, autopsy is also performed.  However, in non-suspicious cases involving self-inflicted GSW, PMCT is combined with an external examination, and sometimes a partial autopsy to retrieve a retained projectile, replacing the full autopsy. 

This webinar will introduce participants to the use of PMCT in the diagnosis of blunt force trauma.  PMCT scan may be used to diagnose fatal trauma in certain situations, allowing an external examination with postmortem CT to supplant an autopsy, which may better honor religious and cultural requests of grieving family members.  Non-suspicious, traumatic deaths, such as motor vehicle collisions, are such an example.  Additionally, PMCT often provides additional documentation of internal injuries where fatal injuries are obvious on external examination.