Mark's Notebook


	Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. - Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

SGI tries its hand at forensics

San Francisco Chronicle

Monday 16 May 2005, 3:57 pm
Keywords: Computer Topics , News Articles

Italian police using computer graphics for crime scene analysis

By Benjamin Pimentel, Chronicle Staff Writer

Police in Italy are using virtual reality technology from Silicon Graphics Inc. to re-create crime scenes on cases straight out of an episode of the hit TV show "CSI."

The Italian state police's violent crime analysis unit in Rome has used a Silicon Graphics Inc. supercomputer system to help solve the murder of a University of Rome student and to reopen the investigation into the unsolved killing of a prominent police officer.

Detectives set up a laser scanner in the middle of the room to record every bit of information at the scene. "The scanner is like a big camera that is connected to a computer, and the computer drives the camera while scanning," said Francesco Camana, technical director of forensics science office of the Italian state police.

The digital data is then translated into a 3-D image that can be projected onto an 18-foot-by-7-foot floor-level screen "large enough to re- create the actual crime with startling realism," SGI said.

FBI Spokesman Paul Bresson said the agency's laboratory "utilizes both 3- D and 2-D animation systems, which allows us to do a fly-through of crime scenes."

But the FBI doesn't "have anything quite like this," he said in an e-mail after reviewing the details of the Italian system.

Greg Estes, SGI's vice president of corporate marketing, said SGI hopes to show the FBI and other law enforcement agencies what the Italian police have been able to do with virtual reality technology.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/05/16/BUG1HCO
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