Camera Images Invisible Blood

Chemists at the University of South Carolina have developed a camera that can image blood that is otherwise unseen by the naked eye, which could significantly impact forensic science.

The new technology, called multimode imaging in the thermal infrared, could eventually be used in crime scene investigations, since it can capture bloodstains that the human eye can’t see.

Drs. Stephen Morgan and Michael Myrick, professors in the department of chemistry and biochemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences, published their work in a series of three reports in the American Chemical Society’s Analytical Chemistry, a semimonthly journal. Graduate students Heather Brooke, Megan Baranowski and Jessica McCutcheon were also authors of the study.

“Detecting blood is like the holy grail of forensics,” Morgan said. “When you are able to detect blood at a crime scene, you know something bad has happened.”

Blood detection is important at a crime scene because blood can be typed and can provide DNA, and pattern analysis of blood spatter may be able to help determine the sequence of events, he said.

He said the luminol test, which is widely used to detect bloodstains and other bodily fluids at crime scenes, has several disadvantages. Luminol is potentially toxic; it can dilute blood solutions below levels where DNA can be retrieved; it can cause blood spatter patterns to smear, and it can produce false positive results.

Using the camera means that the surface doesn’t have to be changed in any way while it is being examined. “With this, we view the scene without touching it,” Morgan said.

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