Cape Town - Forensic facial imaging can help with the thousands of unidentified bodies in South Africa’s medico-legal laboratories waiting to be identified each year.
This is according to Dr Kathryn Smith, an interdisciplinary visual and forensic artist and chairperson of the Department of Visual Arts at Stellenbosch University (SU).
Smith established the VIZ.Lab research group at SU to promote research in forensic identification, and experiments with digital design and visualisation methods. It is the culmination of more than 30 years of traversing the chasm between science and art by working in forensic laboratories and producing artistic and curatorial projects to explore cultural representations of death.
Her PhD focused on forensic visual identification processes, including reviewing records of more than 1 000 unclaimed bodies from a Cape Town mortuary, critically assessing the associated post-mortem photographs for image quality and facial condition.
Smith said: “For skeletal remains, a facial reconstruction might be the only opportunity to attempt to identify an unknown person. But reconstructing a face from the skull is labour-intensive and time consuming and may require expert cleaning prior to anthropological analysis and reconstruction.”
While the skull reveals an enormous amount about face and feature shape, other critical visual information about someone’s physical appearance – such as skin tone and texture, eye colour, hair colour, length and texture, and body mass cannot be inferred from the skull alone, Smith said. This information is usually available unless a body is in a very advanced stage of decomposition.
“If sufficient facial information is present to infer living appearance, even with facial trauma, it is possible to digitally adjust a post-mortem photograph to restore a plausible and acceptable living appearance. This is much quicker and more reliable than reconstructing a face from a skull.”
All deceased persons admitted into a forensic facility are photographed, but Smith’s research showed that there is no image standardisation, which means the resulting post-mortem photos are very unreliable. They cannot be confidently used for facial comparison or to create a depiction for a public appeal for information, which are two accepted methods of facial identification.
Of 1 010 unidentified cases Smith reviewed, only 30% had suitable associated photographs. This means that many bodies can lie in the morgue for far longer than the mandated 30 days before they can be legally released for a pauper burial, she said.
Smith advocates for training forensic officers in post-mortem facial photography as a cost-effective intervention.
She also recommends that a post-mortem depiction should be produced as early as possible in the identification process, and for it to be shared widely on social media if there is a need for identification.
Cape Times