Everyone who’s watched a police procedural knows that crime scene investigators can link the tiniest bits of organic evidence to a perpetrator though their DNA. A new technique could take DNA’s crime-fighting potential a quantum leap forward: by leveraging it to create a 3D model of the suspect’s face, researchers report in the journal Advanced Science.
Their computational tool, called Difface, looks for genetic differences between single letters of the genetic alphabet, known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). It then clusters related data points into what the researchers call “3D facial point clouds” — essentially, sets of data points that represent the exterior surface of a face.
Researchers tested the method on a Han Chinese database with SNPs. They demonstrated that Difface could complete an accurate facial reconstruction based on DNA data. Adding information such as age, sex, and body mass index improved the quality of the 3D images.
“Amazingly, ...
