WIRED MAGAZINE | APRIL 2005 | START

Faces of the Dead

Forensics

TV isn't real, so it shouldn't be a surprise that many of the slick, perp-nabbing gadgets on CSI don't exist. Take those machines that scan a skull of some hapless (and unidentifiable) victim, then slap on pixelated muscle and skin, and--poof!-- produce a digital image of missing Uncle Joe. In real life, the process can take days. But reality is catching up. The FastSCAN Cobra can digitally reproduce a skull in the lab or, even better, right at the crime scene. The portable laser scanner, bundled with new whiz-bang 3-D tissue- rendering software, is a huge leap forward for forensics. Until now, making a 3-D image of a skull and adding flesh involved toting it to a hospital for a CT scan.

FastSCAN's advantage - besides its tiny size and even tinier price tag ($20,000, compared with $1 million-plus for a CT scanner)--is its free-motion wand. Designed by Applied Research Associates New Zealand, the wand laser-scans the object while an electromagnetic sensor receives signals from a nearby transmitter. The wand and transmitter triangulate the object, building a 3-D framework. In minutes, software stitches together a likeness, rendering layers of muscles, fat, and skin onto a digitally scanned skull.

Police in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Boston, and New Jersey are eager to take the device for a test-drive. The UN's chief forensic official, José Pablo Baraybar, bought one to identify genocide victims in Kosovo. The US military is interested in using it to ID remains. Maybe the producers at CSI should get royalties for life imitating art.