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Laboratory-generated impact spatter bloodstain pattern used in the eye tracking experiment (test pattern)
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Bloodstain pattern analysis (BPA) is the forensic discipline concerned with the classification and interpretation of bloodstains and bloodstain patterns at the crime scene. At present, it is unclear exactly which stain or pattern properties and their associated values are most relevant to analysts when classifying a bloodstain pattern. Eye tracking...
Citations
... This technology has been applied in various fields to assess practitioner performance (Duchowski 2017;Horsley 2014). Eye-tracking technology has generally dominated psychology research, but has recently been utilized within a number of other scientific disciplines for educational purposes, protocol development, proficiency testing, and cognition studies (Arthur et al. 2018;Ashraf et al. 2018;Hicklin et al. 2019;Paul et al. 2019). The use of eyetracking technology as a research tool to study decision making in criminal investigations and other forensic sciences has been utilized, but for only a few published studies covering fields such as handwriting analysis (Dyer et al. 2006(Dyer et al. , 2008, fingerprint examination (Busey et al. 2011;Hicklin et al. 2019), blood spatter analysis (Arthur et al. 2018), and general crime scene investigation (Watalingam et al. 2017). ...
... Eye-tracking technology has generally dominated psychology research, but has recently been utilized within a number of other scientific disciplines for educational purposes, protocol development, proficiency testing, and cognition studies (Arthur et al. 2018;Ashraf et al. 2018;Hicklin et al. 2019;Paul et al. 2019). The use of eyetracking technology as a research tool to study decision making in criminal investigations and other forensic sciences has been utilized, but for only a few published studies covering fields such as handwriting analysis (Dyer et al. 2006(Dyer et al. , 2008, fingerprint examination (Busey et al. 2011;Hicklin et al. 2019), blood spatter analysis (Arthur et al. 2018), and general crime scene investigation (Watalingam et al. 2017). The results of these studies provide insight into an experts' gaze fixations and the areas of interest when evaluating evidence (Arthur et al. 2018) and in the application of search strategies to process crime scenes (Watalingam et al. 2017). ...
... The use of eyetracking technology as a research tool to study decision making in criminal investigations and other forensic sciences has been utilized, but for only a few published studies covering fields such as handwriting analysis (Dyer et al. 2006(Dyer et al. , 2008, fingerprint examination (Busey et al. 2011;Hicklin et al. 2019), blood spatter analysis (Arthur et al. 2018), and general crime scene investigation (Watalingam et al. 2017). The results of these studies provide insight into an experts' gaze fixations and the areas of interest when evaluating evidence (Arthur et al. 2018) and in the application of search strategies to process crime scenes (Watalingam et al. 2017). As an example, studies looking at forensic document examiners demonstrate experienced examiners are more accurate than lay persons at identifying counterfeit signatures (Dyer et al. 2006(Dyer et al. , 2008. ...
The human interpretation of analytical outputs is a significant challenge in forensic science, making it vital to explore the application of protocols as we enhance our practices. This study assesses decision making in forensic anthropological analyses utilizing eye-tracking technology to quantify an observer’s estimate of confidence and reliability. Ten individuals with varying levels of education and experience were asked to score cranial morphologies for two human crania. Each participant’s fixation points, fixation duration, and visit count and duration were assessed using Tobii™ Pro 2 eye-tracking glasses. Mid-facial morphologies capturing relative widths were the quickest scored traits, with an overall median time of 14.59 seconds; more complex morphological assessments took longer. Using time as a proxy for confidence, Kruskal-Wallis rank sum results indicate individuals with less experience differed significantly from individuals with greater experience (p = 0.01) although differences in level of education were not significant. Interestingly, intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) indicate interobserver reliability is high between observers, suggesting experience only slightly improves agreement. These preliminary results suggest experience is more important than level of education. Through empirical decision making studies, forensic anthropologists can improve practices—increasing the transparency of evaluative decision making by targeting confusing or problematic aspects of a data collection practice, and in so doing, enhance training.
... Many fields and disciplines of forensic science already benefit from computer-aided analysis, which shortens the computation time and enables high-throughput analysis [3,6,9,10,14]. In the field of forensic blood trace pattern analysis, new approaches to digital analysis have also emerged in recent years [2,5,8,19]. There are even final software products that are supposed to support the interpretation of blood stains at the crime scene [11,12]. ...
The classification of detected bloodstains into predetermined categories is a crucial component of the so-called bloodstain pattern analysis. As in other forensic disciplines, deep learning methods may help to reduce human subjectivity within this process, may increase the classification accuracy, shorten the calculation time and thus, enable high-throughput analysis. In this work, an approach is presented in which a convolutional neural network (Inception v3) was trained from 965 drip stains (passive origin) and 1595 blood spatters (active origin). The trained CNN was evaluated with a test data set consisting of 366 images of drip stains and blood spatters. The success rate was 99.73% which suggests that neural networks could also be used to automatically classify other classes of bloodstain patterns to speed up the investigation process in the future.
... Such techniques have included the use of eye-trackers to further understand how experts go about visual tasks particularly in terms of the reliability and reproducibility of methods. Within forensic science this has specifically focused on handwriting documentation [12] finger mark comparison tasks [13], criminal lineup identification [14] crime scene investigator practice [15,16], and blood pattern analyses [17]. ...
... In addition, eye-trackers have also been used as a tool for gaining access to the gaze patterns and decision making strategies involved in blood pattern analyses [17]. In this study eye tracking technology was used to collect data from 24 blood pattern analysts whilst inspecting bloodstain patterns from a laboratory generated task. ...
... In this study eye tracking technology was used to collect data from 24 blood pattern analysts whilst inspecting bloodstain patterns from a laboratory generated task. The result of the study gave further insight into experts gaze fixations and areas of interest when analysing bloodstain patterns [17]. ...
This initial study is the first to use eye-trackers as a tool in order to study gaze pattern strategies and decision making processes involved in the assessment of skeletal remains. Three experienced participants were asked to wear eye-tracking glasses (Tobii Pro Glasses 2) when estimating sex and age-at-death of one set of skeletal remains from a known archeological sample. The study assessed participants' fixation points (the features of the skeleton focused on), fixation duration (the total time spent on each assessment and feature) as well as visit count and duration (the total number of visits and the duration of visits to particular areas). The preliminary results of this study identified differences in gaze "strategies" with regards to fixation points, visit duration, and visit counts between the participants. The data generated provide a starting point for assessing how such technologies could be used in order to more fully understand the decision making processes involved in forensic anthropological interpretations and their role in forensic reconstructions.
Development and technology have a huge impact on the shaping of forensics. In this chapter, I will try to present some of the most current problems for the community of bloodstain pattern analysts. Also, I will present compelling, current research to facilitate the work or solve these problems.
