Slashdot Mirror
Building the Face of a Criminal From DNA
Dave Knott writes: It sounds like science fiction, but revealing the face of a criminal based on their genes may be closer than we think. In a process known as molecular photo fitting, scientists are experimenting with using genetic markers from DNA to build up a picture of an offender's face. Dr. Peter Claes, a medical imaging specialist at the University of Leuven, has amassed a database of faces and corresponding DNA. Armed with this information, he is able to model how a face is constructed based on just 20 genes (this number will soon be expanded to 200). At the moment, police couldn't publish a molecular photo-fit like this and hope to catch a killer. But that's not how Dr. Claes sees the technique being used in a criminal investigation. "If I were to bring this result to an investigator, I wouldn't necessarily give him the image to broadcast. I would talk to him and say okay, you're looking for a woman, with a very specific chin and eyebrow structure."
If you're a bad person we'll reconstruct an identical clone of you and imprison it as your punishment.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I like how he talks about how he would envision seeing this used, but, I think he actually has it backwards. Not surprizing since, his expertise is in the technique, not necessarily in what it may be used for.
Rather than "you are looking for...." better is to hold this back and narrow down the field. "You have X suspects, now you can eliminate all that don't match this". That will give you better results than "look for people who match this".
This sort of thing has come up many times with the use of this sort of statistic. There are only a handful of blood types, for example, but, if you can say with certainty that the suspect is one of a small group of 2 or 3 people, then blood type might get you down to 1....even though it would be otherwise pretty useless without other information to go on.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
While it's a mainstay of many movies from the 1960s and 1970s for criminals to disguise themselves using highly expensive plastic surgery, I'd hardly call it "common", no.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Don't forget that environmental factors would render a full human rendering completely inaccurate. Do you go to the gym? Do you have long hair? Do you tan? It can be close, but not perfect.
I don't even see the code. All I see is blonde, brunette, red-head...
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Had to say it.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Maybe not old as in really old, but at least since 2012/2013/2014.
Even artists know about it.
2012
https://web.archive.org/web/20...
"Researchers have moved one step closer to facial reconstruction with DNA by discovering the genes that help control the width of the human face. A recent study of almost 10,000 individuals revealed five genes associated with different facial shapes – known as PRDM16, PAX3, TP63, C5orf50, and COL17A1. Manfred Kayser and his team of the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of people’s heads to map facial landmarks and estimate facial distances."
2013
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09... "We leave genetic traces of ourselves wherever we go -- in a strand of hair left on the subway or in saliva on the side of a glass at a cafe. So you may want to think twice the next time you spit out your gum or drop a cigarette butt in public. New York artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg might pick it up, extract the DNA and create a 3-D face that could look like you. Her project, "Stranger Visions," fashions portrait sculptures from bits of genetic material collected in public places."
2014
http://www.forbes.com/sites/al...
"Sometime in the future, technicians will go over the scene of the crime. They’ll uncover some DNA evidence and take it to the lab. And when the cops need to get a picture of the suspect, they won’t have to ask eyewitnesses to give descriptions to a sketch artist – they’ll just ask the technicians to get a mugshot from the DNA. That, at least, is the potential of new research being published today in PLOS Genetics. In that paper, a team of scientists describe how they were able to produce crude 3D models of faces extrapolated from a person’s DNA."
http://www.kuleuven.be/english...
"Scientists are getting closer to constructing a likeness of a person's face using nothing but a DNA sample. Postdoctoral researcher Peter Claes and his colleagues describe the technique in a recent publication in PLOS Genetics. Their work opens a horizon of potential future applications in forensics, anthropology and medicine."
Now its 2015.
Criminal investigations is a niche use. The broad use and real revenue would be an adult picture of your unborn child or new baby. Future parents already pay $300-400 for 3d sonograms of their fetus. Imagine seeing your new baby's face each year from two to twenty years old.
You could even sequence a couple individually and show the full range of boy and girl facial outcomes with probabilities. Right now they can use some morphing techniques as a kludge but genetics could be MUCH more predictive.
Creepy, creepy, creepy...
Digital face construction from DNA is used to identify people for as simple a crime as throwing a used chewing gum on the street.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/...
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley