Automatically Detect the Bloodstain Ellipse

Click on the stain and HemoSpat will make a best guess at fitting an ellipse to it. If it needs to be adjusted, use the ellipse control points - a couple of clicks with the mouse and you're done.

Crop

Digital photos from a crime scene often include more information than you really need - often capturing more than one bloodstain. To make analysis easier, crop the image using HemoSpat so you can focus in on the stain of interest.

Zoom

Some digital cameras do not include a macro setting or they may be insufficient for up-close photography. This can result in an image of a bloodstain that is a bit too small to work with effectively. HemoSpat allows you to zoom in so your ellipse selection is as precise as possible.

Guidelines

Optional guidelines will show you the bounding box for the ellipse selection to help you fit it to the bloodstain.

Invert

In order to increase the contrast between the bloodstain and the background, it is sometimes useful to invert the colours in the image. This is as simple as clicking a button.

Rotate Your Images

Sometimes in hard-to-reach places you may end up having to take photos which are upside down. HemoSpat 1.3 provides a way to rotate your images 90° left and right and 180° so you don't need to use another image program to do it.

Drag & Drop To Manage Your Images

HemoSpat supports the analysis of more than one pattern at a time and includes several ways to import your digital images into the project. Simply drag your images to the window to add it to a pattern or create a new one. Moving stains between patterns is as easy as dragging the image from one pattern to the other.

We don't live in a world where all surfaces are perpendicular, so why should your analysis be restricted to that? HemoSpat has an easy-to-use surface editor that will allow you add any flat surface to the scene for your analysis. These surfaces may be exported to your crime scene reconstruction software to give you a framework to start from or to double-check that everything lines up properly.

Use Relative Locations

To make the measurement of stain locations on angled surfaces easier, HemoSpat 1.2 introduced the concept of relative stain locations. This allows you to measure the stain locations relative to the surface's bottom-left corner, greatly simplifying the process and saving you a lot of time.

Choose Your Coordinate System

Traditionally, the 3D coordinate system used in the field of bloodstain pattern analysis to record bloodstain locations is the right-handed coordinate system. For some people, however, the 'x' and 'y' axes seem "backwards" because they visualize 3D space in terms of the left-hand coordinate system. HemoSpat lets you choose which coordinate system you want to use.

Data Forms

We provide forms to be used at the crime scene for recording bloodstain location information and surface information. They are laid out according to how the data is input into HemoSpat when analyzing a scene. These may also be filed with your case paperwork for future reference.

Enter your stain names and locations quickly using the Quick Entry window. On the left, the current working image of the stain you are editing is shown. On the right is the table where you can tab through and quickly modify the name and location data for each stain.

The area of origin is calculated in real time for each pattern. This means that as you change your stain data, the origin is automatically recalculated. Export the data any time you like to see a snapshot in 3D.

If you are conducting an experiment and you know the origin of the impact pattern, turning on Experiment Mode lets you specify the known origin for the impact pattern. HemoSpat will use this to calculate and display the delta against the calculated origin. The known origin is optionally included when using HemoSpat's 2D Viewer. If you export to COLLADA to view your scene in Apple Preview or SketchUp, you can include the known origin in the 3D diagram as well.

Digital cameras often save additional information about the photos, called EXIF data, in the photos themselves. This includes data such as the camera make and model, when the photo was taken, and if the flash was used or not. With version 1.3 of HemoSpat, you can see this information if it is available.

HemoSpat saves all the analytical work done by the user. Should you see a problem with one of your strings, it is a simple matter to pull up the individual stain and look at the ellipse, plumb, and scale placement. This also allows for a proper peer evaluation because the evaluator will be able to see all the work that went into generating the final data.

HemoSpat stores its data and the analysis in the project. It is, however, your data and you should be able to use it however you like. You should not have to manually enter this data again into other software for further analysis. Your data may be exported in various formats for reports, directional analysis using other software, or for use in crime scene reconstruction.

HemoSpat currently exports to several formats:

• .csv for input into spreadsheets such as OpenOffice.org Calc, Gnumeric, or Microsoft Excel
• .dae for input into Apple's Preview, SketchUp, or any other 3D asset software
• .dxf for input into The Crime Zone^*, AutoCAD, ScenePD, or almost any other CAD software
• .txt for input into The Crime Zone as an ASCII Coordinate file^*
• .txt a basic report generated by HemoSpat itself
• [.bti for input into BackTrack/Images 3.x ^**]
• [.btw for input into BackTrack/Win 3.x ^**]

^* DXF and the ASCII Coordinate files have been verified by The CAD Zone to work with The Crime Zone.
^** We no longer include BackTrack exporters because nobody was using them. If you require them, we can provide them to you on an individual basis.

We will also provide customized exporting to other formats as long as the details of the format are available.

HemoSpat is available for Mac OS X 10.5-10.7 (64-bit Intel), Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.