Uni's fancy forensic footwork
By Diana Thorp
03 June 2003

IF the shoe fits . . . the wearer may end up in jail.

Software developed by university students will help police track criminals by looking at their shoe prints.

The database prototype, developed by La Trobe University computer science students, electronically stores 6000 shoe prints.

It is hoped the database could be operational by the end of the year.

Police from the Victorian Forensic Science Centre approached the university in 2001 wanting to update their shoe-print system.

The new version needed to be icon-based so it was user-friendly and web-enabled and so it could be used by regional centres.

The 36 students, supervised by lecturer Torab Torabi, designed and built the system, called the Imprint Classification and Matching System, as their third-year software engineering project last year.

"They have about 6000 images from different manufacturers," Mr Torabi said.

They also had images and imprints from previous crimes, he said.

"So, it not only compares one image against a manufacturer's information or reference material, but we can also link different crimes together and find the links between crimes," he said.

The students developed a back-end for managing the database, and a front-end to provide a user-friendly interface to present the data.

The system can be expanded.

"The system has been designed so that, not only can it handle shoes but it can be basically used for tool marks, and cigarette butts – any evidence left on a crime scene," Mr Torabi said.

"The solution is a generic solution, not specifically for shoes."

Victoria Police Crime Scene Division quality research and development manager Dr Steve Gutowski said shoe prints provided another strand of evidence.

"It is not a new area," Dr Gutowski said. "What this does is take it from being a fairly specialised specialty operation that requires fairly highly trained staff, restricted to just the one site, and gives us the capability of putting it out to where the regional crime scene officers might be working.

"It is giving access, therefore, to this service in volume crime, burglaries and car thefts and things like that."

The tool could add to a body of evidence and be used to help eliminate some suspects.

"It's all to do with intelligence-led policing. It's an extra piece of intelligence that detectives have to use," Dr Gutowski said. "Then, once you've got them, you've found your suspects, you've got your shoe from the wardrobe and it matches, it's just that extra bit of information that might just help clinch the case."

Discussions for further development of the system are continuing.