National Forensic DNA Database Management System For Criminal Investigations

Abstract

A DNA profile is a genetic fingerprint which is unique to each person and it is used as a powerful evidence to identify individuals in criminology. A DNA database holds DNA profiles taken from individuals and crime scenes and helps in quick identification of criminals that leads to improve the efficiency of the judiciary system of a country. The current process of using DNA evidence in court cases in Sri Lanka is more time consuming since the widely used electrophoresis gel image analysing technique requires expert scientists and often has human errors because of the anomalies that can occur in the faint gel images. Although there are novel advanced technologies and equipment based on capillary electrophoresis, the enormous cost of implementing and licensing them is unaffordable to third world developing countries like Sri Lanka. Therefore, this research paper proposes a fully automated and cost effective methodology to re-engineer the current manual process by integrating recent advancements in the computer science field such as image processing and machine learning techniques to spare human being from voluminous and tedious image analysing and to provide accuracy and rapid speed without human errors. The computerized system will get the scanned electrophoresis gel image as the user input and it will enhance the quality of the gel image by using image processing techniques. After that it will generate the DNA profile and save it as a number pattern to the database for speedy retrieval. The system provides matches linking an individual to a crime scene or a crime scene to another crime scene. Furthermore, the system facilitates family relationship identification based on machine learning techniques. It ensures the security by integrating fingerprint authentication. Establishing a National Forensic DNA Database Management System in Sri Lanka will benefit in identifying criminals and excluding the innocent efficiently. More importantly, it will support to prevent criminals from having many opportunities to commit mass murders, rapes and robberies and to identify potential victims.