The NFI provides high-quality and objective forensic services. The NFI puts great effort into Research & Development (R&D) in order to maintain this quality in the long term. Through R&D the NFI’s work remains state-of-the-art and the services can be continuously improved and updated. This enables the institute to respond to changes with regard to:
the forensic questions asked
the type and number of traces examined
the technology available to examine traces.
The NFI has developed a strategy to determine on which of these developments the R&D activities should focus. For example, thanks to R&D an analysis can be performed more efficiently (process improvement) or it may be possible to obtain more information from the traces examined. Sometimes R&D even leads to the development of completely new expertise, resulting in information becoming available that could not be obtained previously from the traces examined by the NFI.
Recent R&D projects
Three examples of recent R&D projects are:
Improvement of quality and capacity
Robotisation of DNA analysis
The NFI is developing state-of-the-art robot analysis technology. This technology will replace some of the manual work in the DNA laboratory. This will result in a significant increase in the capacity of the DNA laboratory while maintaining or even improving the quality. The new robot line will be flexible and can be adapted to the type of material being examined. This ensures that all material examined receives the best treatment, at a faster pace.
Making suitable and introducing new expertise and techniques
Injury dating
When injuries are found on deceased victims, it is important to be able to estimate how old the injuries are and whether the victim sustained the injuries before death. In this R&D project the NFI developed supplementary techniques in collaboration with the VU Medical Centre. This concerns the analysis of biochemical processes in the wounds that indicate tissue damage and tissue repair. This new technique adds an important dimension to the dating of injuries.
Development of new expertise
Wetenschappelijke Onderbouwing Vingerspoor Individualisatie (WOVI) [Scientific Support for Fingerprint Individualisation] To compare fingerprints the examiners of the NFI look at a number of unique points in the pattern of lines. Sometimes the quality of a fingerprint is so poor that not enough of these points can be found and the fingerprint cannot be used. With the expertise developed in this project examiners can still use the information from these poor-quality fingerprints. This is done through the NFI’s use of a large database of fingerprints, experiments with volunteers and specially developed statistics software.
Forensic Institute
