New Imaging Techniques for Animal Bloodstain Analysis
Funding Goal: $30,000
Scenes of animal cruelty may hold blood spatters that are unidentified as animal and may go undetected. This research project seeks to establish new imaging techniques for the rapid on-site identification of suspected animal blood evidence and source species.
Scenes of animal abuse may contain blood evidence. A key question in these investigations is to determine the source of the blood; is it animal, and what species is it from?
Rapid screening methods are invaluable for crime scene investigations because they quickly show which evidence to prioritize for more expensive and time-consuming confirmatory methods or DNA analysis. Pilot research into novel imaging tools show a successful species identification rate of 100%, but needs substantially more comparisons and method training.
This research project will develop and validate a new imaging method for identifying blood species, and provide instructional workshops for animal investigators. Considering the volume of animal cruelty investigations encountered every day, this project could see integration into investigation protocols across the country on a daily basis.
Further research may explore the aging of blood, the sub-species identification, and confirmatory testing methods.
