Differentiating Donor Age Groups Based on Raman Spectroscopy
of Bloodstains for Forensic Purposes
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Abstract
Developments in analytical
chemistry technologies and portable
instrumentation over the past decade have contributed significantly
to a variety of applications ranging from point of care testing to
industrial process control. In particular, Raman spectroscopy has
advanced for analyzing various types of evidence for forensic purposes.
Extracting phenotypic information (e.g., sex, race, age, etc.) from
body fluid traces is highly desirable for criminal investigations.
Identifying the chronological age (CA) of a blood donor can provide
significant assistance to detectives. In this proof-of-concept study,
Raman spectroscopy and chemometrics have been used to analyze blood
from human donors, and differentiate between them based on their CA
[i.e., newborns (CA of <1 year), adolescents (CA of 11–13
years), and adults (CA of 43–68 years)]. A support vector machines
discriminant analysis (SVMDA) model was constructed, which demonstrated
high accuracy in correctly predicting blood donors’ age groups
where the lowest cross-validated sensitivity and specificity values
were 0.96 and 0.97, respectively. Overall, this preliminary study
demonstrates the high selectivity of Raman spectroscopy for differentiating
between blood donors based on their CA. The demonstrated capability
completes our suite of phenotype profiling methodologies including
the determination of sex and race. CA determination has particular
importance since this characteristic cannot be determined through
DNA profiling unlike sex and race. When completed, the developed methodology
should allow for phenotype profiling based on dry traces of body fluids
immediately at the scene of a crime. The availability of this information
within the first few hours since the crime discovery could be invaluable
for the investigation