title: Identification of species' blood by attenuated total reflection (ATR) Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy.
abstract: Blood is one of the most common and informative forms of biological evidence found at a crime scene. A very crucial step in forensic investigations is identifying a blood stain's origin. The standard methods currently employed for analyzing blood are destructive to the sample and time-consuming. In this study, attenuated total reflection (ATR) Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy is used as a confirmatory, nondestructive, and rapid method for distinction between human and animal (nonhuman) blood. Partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) models were built and demonstrated complete separation between human and animal donors, as well as distinction between three separate species: human, cat, and dog. Classification predictions of unknown blood donors were performed by the model, resulting in 100 % accuracy. This study demonstrates ATR FT-IR spectroscopy's great potential for blood stain analysis and species discrimination, both in the lab and at a crime scene since portable ATR FT-IR instrumentation is commercially available.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University at Albany, State University of New York, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY, 12222, USA.
authors.forename: Ewelina
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mistek
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University at Albany, State University of New York, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY, 12222, USA. ilednev@albany.edu.
authors.forename: Igor K
authors.initials: IK
authors.lastname: Lednev
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D006801:Humans; D017550:Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared / Q000379:methods*
keywords: ATR FT-IR spectroscopy; Blood; Chemometrics; Forensic investigation; Human origin