Demo: RapidHIT ID Enhanced Investigative Lead Solution and User Impressions

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[MUSIC]

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New at 435, police departments in the state have in-house access to rapid DNA

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technology.

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This fairly new system has the ability to match evidence from a scene to a

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convicted felon.

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Channel 3's Olivia Schuler explains how this tool is speeding up investigations

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for police.

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I take my sample, which would be inside the glove.

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A quick swab of evidence and into this machine, the sample goes.

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Now, we have to wait for an hour and a half and we'll get a result from the

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state lab.

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If the DNA from evidence matches a person in the convicted offender database,

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investigators may have a lead.

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Getting that lead is a very good feeling.

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New Haven police investigators have been using the tool in-house for about a

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year now.

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Prior to that, they had to trek to the state lab in Merrittin to test samples.

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Now, they're seeing how much quicker they're able to process evidence.

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Once investigators entered the samples into the terminal, police identified a

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suspect and could pursue a warrant.

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The terminal is also used to help solve major crimes.

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Cheryl Correiro, deputy director of the Division of Scientific Services,

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says nearly 500 officers have been trained and in turn, using the rapid DNA

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terminal has led to 200 leads.

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And I'm sure there will be more to come.

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This is the future of DNA testing.

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In Merrittin, Olivia Schuler, Channel 3, Eyewitness News.

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Hi, everyone, and welcome to HIDS 2024.

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I'm Peter John McEnany, senior technical application scientist with the

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Forensic Science Applications Group.

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I've been with Thermo Fisher for about eight years now.

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In the last few years, I've been working on a couple projects that are aimed at

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elevating our rapid DNA solution for crime scene evidence.

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And now I want to introduce Cheryl Correiro, who's the deputy director of

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Forensic Biology and DNA at the Connecticut Division of Forensic Services.

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Hi, Cheryl.

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Hi, how are you?

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Great. Thank you. How are you?

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Good. Very good.

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You have been involved with rapid DNA for a little while now.

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Can you tell us who you are, where you work, and what you do as it relates to

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rapid DNA and what Connecticut is doing right now?

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Sure, I'm the deputy director here in Connecticut.

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I'm Forensic Biology and DNA Unit.

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I'm also the DNA technical leader.

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But the rapid program came into our lab by our director, Dr. Guy Valaro.

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He wanted to help investigative leads and sending them out quicker in a

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turnaround time for the police departments.

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And so we started looking at the rapid hit ID at Thermo, and we purchased one

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in 2020.

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And then by 2021, July of 2021, we went live.

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Connecticut's not in our SD States, so we couldn't use it in booking stations.

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But we checked out all the ins and outs of what needed to be done, and we

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copied our state convicted offender database and put it into a standalone

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database, small pond.

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And we were able to use it for single source suspected single source samples,

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and be able to see if there was a match and be able to aid in the investigation

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of the police departments.

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And it's been very, very successful since 2021.

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Fantastic.

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And since 2021, you guys have validated and have been using the rapid intel

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sample cartridge.

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Is that correct?

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Yeah, correct.

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Yeah.

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OK, and do you have any limitations that you've discovered with that sample

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cartridge or your workflow around blood saliva samples?

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Are those the main samples that you guys test?

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Yeah, you got the top three blood wearer DNA saliva.

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You know, trace DNA is not well suited for rapid DNA.

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You know, they're always mixtures and low level.

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So we try to stay with body fluids where DNA is very successful.

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We train our police departments to be able to know what is an acceptable sample

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to run.

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We have been working with them for the past three years, and we've gotten a 25%

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hit rate between our convicted offender, the copy of the convicted offender,

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with our unknown rapid samples.

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Fantastic.

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And you have multiple rapid-hit ID instruments throughout the state.

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Is that correct?

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We have three machines in the laboratory.

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One of those will eventually go to a mobile van, Waterbury PD, Greenwich PD,

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Bridgeport PD, New Haven PD, a state police troop, and Hartford PD.

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And these were selected based upon high crime areas and where other agencies

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can go to not have to drive 45 minutes to get to the lab to run the sample.

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So they can go to, for instance, Hartford and run the sample there because we

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're all interconnected.

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It's been great, really.

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Fantastic.

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And one of the things about your rapid DNA workflow for crime scene samples is

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you review every single sample before it is uploaded to the database that you

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mentioned earlier.

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Is that correct?

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We do.

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We turned off the automatic upload on the green check marks.

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It's just because we wanted more control over what was going into our small-

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bottom database.

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And we wanted to review samples to look at a full green check mark.

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We wanted to look, did this give high peaks, low peaks?

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There's things we want to look at as we venture further into our program

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development.

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Great.

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And speaking of further development, sounds like you've been fully operational

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since 2021.

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So when abouts did you hear about our latest version of software, the version 2

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.0 Rapid Hit ID system software and the RapidLink software and the new Rapid

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Intel Plus cartridge?

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Right.

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So I've discussed with Thermo a lot of things with the regular Intel cartridge.

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And there was a lot of peak height imbalance in the single source samples.

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You know, if we're looking at it as a DNA analyst, okay, this could be the

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basis of the amplification on the Intel.

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You know, conventional testing is five times more sensitive.

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We found that out from our validation.

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So they actually kind of sort of said last year we have something coming out.

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And when Doug Harris made the announcement about QAS adopting Rapid Hit for

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investigative leads, you guys shared with us that you were making an Intel Plus

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cartridge.

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And we were quite excited about that.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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And it sounds like one of the key topics to hit on is that review process.

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And the correlation between maybe peak height balance sensitivity that's

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leading to more and more samples with the previous cartridge meeting review.

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Would that be fair to say?

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Yes, very fair.

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There are every single crime scene sample that runs on the Intel, almost all of

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them are yellow check marks.

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It could be a complete single source profile, but there might be artifact or

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two and they'll call it or the peak height imbalance is not within the limits

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that the. Analysis software wants.

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So with the Intel Plus, the samples we've been running a lot, a lot of more

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green check marks, which is very good for those labs or PDs that want to

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automatically use the gene.

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I mean, the green check mark.

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Into their race.

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Yeah, we are going to demonstrate and look at a couple of those profiles.

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But first, I just want to ask you a couple general questions around your

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upgrade process because you were existing rapid hit ID user.

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You already familiar with processing crime scene evidence on the rapid hit ID

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instrument.

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When you made this, not the switch, but the decision to upgrade an instrument

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and get the new software, get the new chemistry.

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What was that process like?

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What was that experience like including acquiring the software having it

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installed and the training, which I actually was a part of.

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So no pressure.

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The training was excellent.

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It really was connecting it with the to our server.

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The IT portion was a little lagging.

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I think because we were the guinea pigs with upgrading actual instrument and

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then being able to connect to the network.

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So that was a little like hit or miss, but you guys were learning and it's much

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better now.

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The use of the rapid link 2.0 is so much better than the no offense, but it's

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so much better than the original one.

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I really enjoy working with that one and can't wait to upgrade to all of our

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instruments and use it.

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Great. No, glad to hear it. Glad to hear that you love rapid link 2.0.

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So that basically covers like your first impressions of the software.

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Do you have any first impressions of the chemistry, the new Rapid Intel Plus

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cartridge?

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Yeah, I completely noticed that there was more peak valves.

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I was comparing what we ran in validation and actually what some blood swabs

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looked like from real crime scene samples to the validation samples that we

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made. So much better peak height ratios.

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I found that it's not usually more sensitive, but there is slight sensitivity

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because I saw that some samples that dropped out at the larger low-sigh were in

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with the Intel Plus.

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So you could say if sample variation could affect that, but I take it as maybe

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there's a little bit more sensitivity with it.

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And I know you guys are going to be primarily taking advantage of the general

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protocol, which is geared more towards the traditional spun cotton swab, the

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much larger swab compared to a specialized swab.

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Have the improvements like the balance and maybe the sensitivity led to more

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confidence in the case type evidence?

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And I say that because tying it back to more green check marks or less yellows,

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is that a true statement to make?

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In a way, it more confidence in the sense that you're going to get green check

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marks, but being a DNA analyst and looking at the data,

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I can tell if it's a single source profile with a couple of those I drop out.

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So Intel was giving that, and that's why we have 900 samples that have been run

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so far.

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But we know they're reproducible, robust single source samples, and we know

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through years that SDRs can be reproduced multiple times.

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No problem.

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But I do like the three options for, and the two runs, general and specialized

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for the Intel, and we validated all three.

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And all three are basically the same.

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Flocked swabs do a little better on liquid blood or body fluids.

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But in general, a cotton swab, which the PEDs will use, it's going to get hard

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for them to use a flocked swab and know when to use it.

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But the cotton swab, or if they have a cotton swab and they take the flop, take

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the flop and push it up against the cotton, that works too.

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So, but we're basically, can use all three, they all work, but we're going to

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focus on the cotton swabs.

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And then the flocked swabs we will use when it's possible that we can get in

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there and say, "Hey, we use a flocked swab."

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Okay, fantastic. And I do want to take a quick moment just for our viewers to

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expand further a little bit on the general and specialized protocols.

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So, when we created the Rapid Head ID Software 2.0, we wanted to maximize

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sensitivity.

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But we didn't want to take away the option to just use a general spun cotton sw

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ab that almost all crime labs, law enforcement agencies, either use or are

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familiar with.

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So, we have two protocols. The general one is really, like I said, geared

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towards that spun cotton swab.

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The difference is the general protocol uses a larger volume of lysis buffer to

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collect the DNA into a lysate.

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The specialized protocol uses a much smaller volume and is really only meant to

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be used with a specialized swab, like you mentioned, a mini or micro flocked sw

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ab.

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The characteristics of those swabs are that they have a much smaller tip, they

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absorb a much smaller amount of liquid, so they can be used with that smaller l

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ysis volume to produce a much more concentrated lysate.

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We don't want to mix and match the general protocol with a micro swab and the

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specialized protocol with a cotton swab because that particular combination can

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lead to full absorbency of the lysis buffer and no release of that lysate

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downstream into PCR and further on.

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Just wanted to provide a little bit of background there before we jump right

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into the software. But again, one more question, one more quick question for

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you.

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Are there any plans to expand on your sample types? You mentioned blood, body

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fluids and where are there any plans to expand on that with rapid Intel plus or

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investigate additional sample types?

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If I could just go back to your comments about the cotton swab. The reason why

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we found out that the flock was better with liquids, you know, it's smaller.

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The cotton swab with where DNA is slightly better because you have more surface

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area to capture those cells. So that's just I wanted to point that out.

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We take it as the police agencies have these pieces of evidence and they take

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two swabs, one for conventional testing and one for rapid and we've always done

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that and that's always the case with every case and so far 100% concordance

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with what we send out through small ponds and rapid hit to the real true codus

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hit and then report with statistics.

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100% concordance, maybe a second contributor might come up once in a while on

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some of those samples for conventional but overall it's 100% concordance.

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We feel that agencies have it in their possession. It's their chain of custody.

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They haven't sent it to the lab. So we will advise them.

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Hey, you know, you don't want to, you know, swab a doorbell or something. It's

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probably not the best for rapid.

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And some of them will say, oh, but I just want to try it. I was like, and

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explained to them the limitations and explain to them that they possibly can be

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losing 50% of their sample.

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But in the end, we give advice. It's their evidence. It's not ours yet. So I

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don't feel that there's anything on the lab in the sense and rapid is outside

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of our accreditation.

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We don't have anything to do with our accreditation and it's a tool for police.

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So we kind of let them run and I think Intel Plus will help because of the, you

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know, better p-type balance and the drop, like the dropout now is coming in.

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So yeah, I think there'll be more green check marks and more samples that hit

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our threshold to be able to put into small pond to search.

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If that makes sense.

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Absolutely. Yeah. And speaking of evidence, why don't we go ahead and

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transition over to actually looking at some of your validation samples.

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You provided a couple examples for us that we can actually demonstrate use of

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the RapidLink 2.0 software.

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So I actually have that software loaded on my computer right now.

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I am running this in Google Chrome, the recommended browser.

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And I just have this maximized on my Macintosh computer. It is browser based

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can be run on any computer system.

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And essentially, this is what the login screen looks like.

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You have a username and password for each user. And once I sign in, the first

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thing that we're going to see is most likely a long list of our runs.

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Our previous runs incoming runs. I don't have any. I'm not actually connected

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to an instrument.

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Runs that have been reviewed. Runs that have been uploaded. I'm not connected

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to a database.

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So I have not think uploaded and then completed runs that have been marked as

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reviewed.

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Okay. Now you provided five different samples and I'm going to demonstrate a

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quick and easy way to find those samples amidst the two different pages that we

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have here.

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So on this run list, I've got two different pages. Just one on that last page.

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But just to find yours, I could search by date range and I could put in a two

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and a from date.

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I could search by profile quality, but maybe I don't know if those were green,

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yellow or red. And I could search by status. And there are a lot of different

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statuses in here.

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I know that I haven't reviewed them. These are just validation. So I could

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quickly find them that way. But I might have a whole bunch of other samples

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that need review as well.

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What I do know about your samples is that I could filter by the first couple

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letters of the names because they all started with the L. And if I just do that

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, I get everything.

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I could also add this little dash here to further filter out these particular

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samples. But in just providing some search filter text, I can filter down to

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just your five samples.

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And now I want to show that RapidLink 2.0, every table has its own settings.

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And we can quickly say, well, how many rows do we want to show for each screen

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or each page?

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And what columns do we want to show or hide? And I've hidden a couple of the

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default just so that we can get everything to fit nicely on my computer screen

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for the purposes of this demonstration.

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Now, I've also added in a couple comments here, which you can do if I just

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select the sample and choose more actions, add or edit comments.

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I can come in here and we can see my comment for this sample was, hey, this is

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from Connecticut. This was a water bottle. And this was run using the general

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protocol.

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Just a fun thing that you can do is add comments to all of your samples.

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So in order to view the Electropharium, which is something brand new to Rapid

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Link and new for RapidLink 2.0, I have two options.

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I can either click on the hyperlink that is the sample name and I'll be taken

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directly to the Electropharium.

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However, I won't be in a review mode. I won't be able to make edits or complete

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a review for that profile.

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But that's what we're going to do today because we're not actually in the

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process of DNA workflow.

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If I did want to review and make edits, I would select this row or this sample

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and then click review sample.

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And the same Electropharium would launch, but I would be able to make edits and

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review.

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So let's dig right into this first sample. I'm going to click on the hyperlink

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and we're going to load the brand new Electropharium or trace viewer as part of

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RapidLink 2.0.

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And just to kick off the discussion about this sample, again, this was a water

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bottle sample. Did you swab the water bottle and then put the swab into the

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Intel plus sample cartridge?

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Correct. Wonderful. Wonderful. Okay. So you didn't know exactly how much was

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going to be on the swab, but maybe you knew how much was going to be on this

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kind of mock evidence type sample.

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Yeah, we took two swabs and we actually in the validation, conventionally

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tested everything to show that that you can get 100% concordance, just FYI.

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Perfect. Wonderful. Yeah. No, thank you for all of that information. We love to

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hear all that. And so to our viewers, right?

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So taking a look at this, it is based off of GMapper IDX. So those users out

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there that use IDX should feel relatively comfortable with this, although it is

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a completely new software.

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Okay. So it has a little bit of the GMapper IDX features, but it also is built

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on a whole new web based platform. So it just looks and feels a little bit

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different.

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One of the things that is unique to Rapid Intel plus, which is our sample

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cartridge for evidence or case type samples is the addition of the STO or STO

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flag.

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And then the quant small and quant large reported DNA concentrations that are

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reflective of the amount of DNA at the time of PCR.

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So for every Rapid Intel plus sample in Rapid Link 2.0, you're going to see the

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indicator flag for the STO flag, and you're going to see the quant values.

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Those are unique to Rapid Intel plus.

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If you were to process an ACE cartridge on Rapid Link 2.0, you would see almost

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everything exactly the same, but you won't see the STO flag or the quant values

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, because those quant values are based on these new additional peaks here at

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these new low side.

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And I just noticed I don't have my marker header showing. So let's go into our

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preferences really quick and turn our marker ranges on.

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And now we can see, I don't know why that wasn't on before. Maybe I did it for

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demonstration purposes, but now you can see the name of this new marker here QQ

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S for quant and quality small and QQL quant and quality large.

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These are brand new markers, brand new peaks for both internal quality control

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and quantification.

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And that internal quality control is really about, is your sample degraded? Is

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it inhibited? If it were, those flags would also be shown right up here at the

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top in this little sample header section.

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Now, this looks like a beautiful DNA profile, and I don't see that there are

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any markers highlighted yellow or red for quality issues. And if you remember

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back on the run screen, we had a really nice green square and basically a pass

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as far as the run quality assessment.

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Is there anything that you want to talk about with this sample before I go into

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a few more bells and whistles about the software?

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Well, just in general, the QQS and the QQL, I mean the first number one is

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human DNA and how that amps and it's for the sample basically.

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Number two is a synthetic, he is a DNA.

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So if something happens with the PCR, number two is going to look different.

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There's going to be maybe a high small with a low large because it's degraded.

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And you can see there's sometimes samples that the two shows and then the one

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is gone and it's just, there's no sample, no DNA sample there. So that we have

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shown that too.

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We use the peak heights also, just so you know you can do that with the

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settings.

24:38

Absolutely.

24:39

And so yeah, I love the new little quant. It's helpful when you have a question

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about is it the degradation or the inhibition too?

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Yeah, and as you mentioned, the number two peaks of these new markers, they are

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amplifying synthetic DNA.

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So they really are geared towards is their PCR inhibition for degradation and

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quantity of DNA.

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That is the number one.

25:06

Yes.

25:07

Yeah.

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I might have a switch to do.

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Yeah.

25:10

Yeah.

25:11

Oops.

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I just highlighted the wrong thing. And as you can see, perfect demonstration

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in this sample is, like you said, the number one peaks can be a lot lower than

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the number two peaks because they are amplifying the human DNA that is present

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in that sample if it is present.

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And because of these low peak heights, you can see here our reported quant

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value values are pretty low, 315 peak grams for the small range and 172 for the

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large range.

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Something I wanted to point out that you've probably figured out as well is

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that because of these IQC peaks in the fam or the blue dye channel, we

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typically end up with what you're seeing here is the SDR peaks in the profile

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look.

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Look shorter.

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They look smaller or less peak amplitude than the rest of the profile.

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But that's because the blue dye channel is sizing its Y axis to the largest

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peak.

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If we go ahead and come in here and I'm just going to use this feature where I

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see the little magnifying glass, I can draw and I'm just going to extend it to

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everything except for those number two peaks.

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And when I let go, it sizes now to this guy at T-POCs.

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And now you get that visual kind of recognition that, okay, my fam peaks do

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appear to be as high in amplitude as the rest of my sample.

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I don't know if you've picked up on that, but it's just something that I like

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to use.

26:41

And yeah, and we have this button right here to reset the zoom. Okay, so in GM

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AP or you could just double click in that same area.

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If we just click this button right here, it'll reset the zoom and you'll know

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if you're zoomed in because it'll be underscored with this blue line here. So

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if I click that, it just resets the zoom right back to the settings that I gave

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it right here from 60 to 460.

27:06

And you also mentioned the labels. So if I go to labels here, I can actually

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choose to see the size or the height.

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But for demonstration purposes, most of the time I leave that off because I

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want to be able to see all my different dye channels and adding more

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information to those labels. It just makes it harder to see everything.

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Okay, now let's see if we're doing okay on time. One thing I want to jump to is

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this one sample you provided that has a quality flag. So this would have been a

27:41

yellow check mark on the instrument, and it would have alerted the user.

27:45

Hey, we definitely want to review this sample, but in your case, you review

27:49

every sample. So you would click on this or I'm going to go to the review

27:54

sample option.

27:55

And I don't know about you, but the first thing I would do is look for, okay,

28:00

what's the problem here. And the easiest way for me to do that is to look at

28:04

the highlighting around the locus or the marker header.

28:08

And for this particular sample, I'm noticing two things. Number one, we've got

28:15

a melagenet has a yellow highlighting around that marker header. It's also

28:22

showing the process quality value flag, which is something that I've toggled on

28:28

And then lastly, just looking at that fam dye channel, I can see, you know, a

28:33

tremendous difference between the number one peak or a quant peak at the quant

28:37

markers and the number twos.

28:39

So right away I have an idea. Maybe this is a low level sample, but who knows,

28:45

it could be just the scaling, right? But if I look at the QTS and QTL, now I've

28:51

got maybe a little bit of confirmation that yeah, this is a pretty low level

28:56

sample.

28:56

I'm showing 73 picograms to 94 picograms at amplification. So those peak height

29:03

, the peak heights are gorgeous.

29:05

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And yeah, we are in the, let's say, 100 plus two,

29:14

maybe 300 RFU range for all of the STR markers.

29:20

But I'm not seeing any imbalance with our rapid Intel plus chemistry and peak

29:26

height ratios that have been built into the system, which is fantastic, right?

29:31

This is for all intents and purposes, all pretty much a green sample. But why

29:37

is it yellow? Let's dig deeper into that just a little bit.

29:41

We can see our stochastic indicator or stochastic flag is actually red. And for

29:48

those viewers at home, our stochastic indicator is built off of the peak

29:53

heights of our five largest STR markers.

29:56

So we found that that was the best representative or indicator for potential

30:01

dropout or peak height imbalance throughout the profile.

30:04

Okay, so we're in the red zone, which means we could be at a high risk of alle

30:10

lic dropout. But we're not seeing any flags for minimum peak height at our STR

30:16

markers.

30:17

But we are seeing at a melagenin that X, and this does look like a female

30:23

sample. So this is an XX, if you will, homozygous.

30:26

And we're getting the low peak height flag. Now, if I go back to my preferences

30:35

here, you can see that I have PQV trigger peak on. If I turn that off and save

30:41

this, essentially that LPH or low peak height flag disappears.

30:45

It's something that you can easily toggle on and off if you want to have that

30:51

extra kind of heads up that, hey, here's the problematic locus for marker for

30:57

the yellow run result.

30:59

Likewise, even faster, I can go to more actions right here, and I can see PQV

31:05

trigger peak. I turned it off in my preferences, but I can turn it right on

31:10

right here and see that value.

31:12

Now, let's dig deeper into this. Let's look at what the peak information toggle

31:20

does. You can see if I highlight over this peak, nothing's happening.

31:23

But if I choose peak information, now when I roll through this dye channel, I

31:30

actually get information about where this circle is.

31:35

And if I go to the top of this peak, it says, is 127 RFU. I get the allele name

31:43

, I get the size, and I get the data point.

31:47

But we're getting a low peak height flag, an LPH. A quick way to find out why

31:53

we're getting that is to look at the table information.

31:58

So we have two ways of getting into that. We can either use this accordion

32:04

arrow right here to bring out these tables, or we can use this little icon

32:09

right here, show hide tables, which does the exact same thing.

32:13

So it basically brings out the tables, pushes your electropharium to the side,

32:19

but maintains your viewing screen.

32:22

And if we look at this trace viewer information and go to allele, we can see

32:29

that if we highlight the X, we can now see down here is highlighted the green

32:33

channel, melagenin, additional information about it.

32:37

But it's really the quality table, or this quality tab, that's going to give us

32:42

more information.

32:43

Now, we know there's only one marker that's giving us a flag, and we can see

32:48

that here.

32:48

But if I scroll through here, you can see the rest of the profile looks good as

32:53

far as the quality flags.

32:54

What we're getting is a low peak height, which we already knew because that was

32:59

on our label.

33:00

But again, why are we getting that? What is that 127R if you being compared to?

33:06

A really nice shortcut in here, similar to IDX where you could show the geno

33:12

types table, and you could actually click on a locus, get a pop out to the

33:18

right of like, well, what's the expected, what was the observed.

33:21

And the same thing here, if we click on a melagenin, we actually get a little

33:27

pop out of all of the thresholds. And if we go through here, we see the low

33:33

peak height threshold for a homozygous genotype is 153 RFU. That's right down

33:40

here.

33:40

We also see the low peak height threshold for a heterozygous allele or two

33:46

peaks, maximum peak height ratio or 20%, and then a cutoff value for

33:51

eliminating noise, peaks above that or below that.

33:55

We also see our stutter information, which we don't see in GMAP or IDX on the

33:56

electropharynge, which is really nice. We can see for this basically n minus 4,

34:06

we have plus stutter and minus stutter around 30%.

34:11

But getting back to why we see this LPH, it's because our peak height was 127

34:18

RFU and our threshold is 153. So with that information, Cheryl, would you

34:26

normally okay or approve this sample or override that genotype quality and say,

34:33

I'm okay with this and basically pass this profile?

34:36

Yes, because a melagenin is not really searched. So it looks good for the rest

34:42

of the profile. I mean, D22 is a little off, but it's not called. It looks fine

34:49

. I would drop it in small fun.

34:50

Great, great. And that process is super easy. You can override that genotype

34:57

quality. We could complete the review, basically say, we want to pass this

35:01

sample.

35:01

And then depending on how your settings are configured, this sample could then

35:07

be automatically uploaded to your external database.

35:11

Wonderful. Is there anything else that you would like to say about this sample

35:17

or RapidLink 2.0?

35:18

It is very useful with all the little nuances and features you guys put on here

35:25

. I like seeing that the quant, I like seeing that it matches to the profile,

35:31

like the ones are low. Well, the DNA is low. And two worked fine.

35:37

Synthetic, so the PCR was good. So yeah, it's been great compared. And there's

35:43

better options also in the instrument that I like to go on in if you're going

35:47

into that soon.

35:48

We can get a little bit into the instruments in the way that one of the new

35:53

things with the Rapidhead ID system software 2.0 is the implementation of work

35:59

flows.

35:59

And workflows are basically how you tell the instrument what screens to show,

36:05

what information if we want a default protocol selected, or if we want dual

36:11

protocol options, we can define our past parameters, our past with review

36:17

parameters, our past partial parameters.

36:20

And to show you that, I'm just going to go into this, let's see, test workflow

36:26

right here, which is inactive. Oh, no, I can't edit that one. Of course, it's

36:31

inactive.

36:31

Let's just see, no, no, let's not do that one.

36:35

Let's try whatever this one is. And we'll go into edit.

36:41

And here we can see basically all of the settings grouped by the sample

36:48

cartridge type.

36:49

Okay, and for those viewers, Rapid Intel plus and Ace are the only two

36:54

cartridges that are supported with the 2.0 software and RapidLink 2.0.

37:00

So that's what we see over here, Rapid Intel plus and the Ace Global Filer

37:05

Express settings.

37:06

Now, on both of these, they're almost identical, but what I really want to show

37:10

you, because we're talking about Rapid Intel plus is the Rapid Intel plus

37:14

settings.

37:14

So once we click on that, we have the option to disable the cartridge.

37:19

If we absolutely don't want to use it, or we could do the same with Ace if this

37:23

is for you guys, is strictly a Rapid Intel plus system.

37:26

And we have the same tabs here, protocol selection, profile evaluation, review

37:32

settings, sample category, and upload settings.

37:35

The one thing I wanted to show real quick is, because this actually does

37:39

control the instrument, is if you decide that you're never going to use the

37:44

specialized protocol.

37:45

An administrator has the option of coming in here and saying, "I want to use

37:50

the general protocol only."

37:52

And for every instrument that this workflow is attached to, you'll never see

37:57

the instrument protocol selection screen.

37:59

It will automatically choose the general protocol so that no one can make a

38:04

mistake and accidentally choose the specialized protocol if you're only using

38:09

your general cotton swabs.

38:10

Of course, you can do the same if you only want to use the specialized protocol

38:15

and those mini or micro swabs, or you can maintain the default, which is

38:20

present the user with a new screen, make them choose a protocol.

38:25

And all of that information is carried out and provided to users during

38:30

training so that they can make the right decision.

38:34

And again, it's administrators who can make this choice right here and push

38:40

this information to the instruments.

38:43

Now, profile evaluation, this is something that goes back to the instrument run

38:49

result, whether it's green, yellow, red, etc.

38:52

Because we have options for the parameters for passing a full profile or a

38:58

partial profile.

38:59

So the expert system software knows if you have a partial profile, right?

39:04

If you have no peaks out of locus or one p got a locus that is below heterozyg

39:09

ous or homozygous threshold, it's going to say,

39:12

this is a partial profile. And normally, that would be a yellow check mark,

39:17

right?

39:18

Administrators do have the ability to come in here and say, yes, I want to pass

39:23

a partial profile.

39:25

And by selecting yes, you can then choose either a minimum number of flag free

39:32

markers or specific required markers that you absolutely must have information

39:38

for.

39:38

For the purposes of maybe your downstream database search for future upload to

39:43

a state national database type of thing.

39:45

So you can come in here and say, I need all of these.

39:49

And let's say this is bare bones, bare minimum. These are the four loci I need.

39:54

But I do want information from my QQS and QQL. You can, of course, toggle those

39:59

This is how you say the specific loci. Up here is if you wanted to just say,

40:07

well, I want five loci, a minimum of five, and I don't care which they are.

40:11

And you can use these together or individually. That will help with past

40:16

partial.

40:17

Past is basically saying, well, what are these parameters for a past without

40:25

any kind of review needed? And it's not a partial profile.

40:28

It's a full profile. And essentially, you can take off loci here and basically

40:36

consider a past to be, yes, there is information at, let's say, T-POCs, but you

40:41

don't care about it.

40:41

You're not going to require it for a past sample. Okay, and that gets a little

40:48

confusing.

40:48

Essentially, the main thing here is the past partial. And being able to

40:54

designate which loci or how many loci could be still green coming off of the

41:00

instrument without any review.

41:02

Still, you would review it, but without any reviewing, the instrument would say

41:08

, this is a past partial sample. It's green.

41:11

And then review settings. You can enable or enable offline review if you're not

41:18

connected to RapidLink.

41:19

You can toggle if you want one reviewer or two reviewers, so like a double

41:24

review for technical review.

41:26

And you can also come in here and choose the profile qualities that must

41:32

include the review process. So by default, it's our yellows and our reds.

41:37

And then one thing I want to point out to all of our would-be new users is that

41:42

if you do want to review control samples like a positive, a negative, or a

41:48

latter,

41:48

you want to be able to pass a positive if there's an artifact you want to

41:52

delete, or you want to pass a negative if there's an artifact you want to

41:56

delete, or something weird happened, and you want to be able to say, no, this

42:00

is okay.

42:01

My R standards, this is okay. It's a perfect profile. It just maybe had an

42:05

artifact or maybe peak height imbalance.

42:07

By default, that's set to no. You're going to want to choose yes if you want to

42:13

be able to review a control sample. Okay? And that all of these changes only

42:19

apply to runs or analyses after these changes have been made and activated on

42:26

the instrument.

42:26

So by choosing yes, you can't go back to something you ran two weeks ago where

42:32

no was selected and review that control sample. Okay?

42:37

And I won't spend too much time on sample category. It's basically just giving

42:42

you the option of choosing which categories do you want to show up on the

42:46

instrument.

42:47

By default, we've got forensic unknown, other maybe tests are some user defined

42:53

ones where you could actually create your ones. And then what are always

42:58

included is test and training.

43:00

And if we jump out of here real quick and go back to the runs.

43:06

Right now, I don't have that toggled in here. But if I go here and say sample

43:14

category.

43:15

Now we have the sample category column. And you can see as I go back here and

43:21

filter back to your samples, it looks like most of them were run under category

43:26

test during your validation.

43:28

And one of them was run as category training. Again, the selection of that

43:34

category makes absolutely no difference as far as you're running the mill run

43:39

and analysis is really meant to be used downstream.

43:43

If you want to use that field or that value to send a profile to a specific

43:49

index or database as part of your external database.

43:53

Are you guys planning on using that with small pond or are you going to

43:59

manually choose where those profiles go?

44:02

We will use some categories because we look at every single profile. We do do

44:09

direct comparisons. So that's another reason why we don't have the greens

44:13

uploaded because I'm not going to put a known profile into the small pond.

44:17

I do like the order of step change with the instrument with 2.0. I do like that

44:23

because this has happened with officers. They go through, they start a run,

44:31

they forget to hit the item number thing and they just put in the cartridge and

44:37

then it runs with nothing or it runs with, you know, so now you have to put the

44:43

cartridge in.

44:43

And then you have to ask for the type of sample and after asks for the item

44:49

number. So it kind of gets them like, "Oh, okay, I got to do the item number

44:55

again."

44:55

So I really liked that. And then general and specialized, we will make

45:00

different workflows depending on, you know, at the lab we'll have both.

45:04

I will figure out other agencies as we go.

45:09

Absolutely. And I think we're getting a little pressed for time. But before we

45:14

leave RapidLink 2.0, I just want to look at this sample, which is blood that

45:19

was deposited on denim.

45:20

And I believe the blood was from 2023. Just wanted to say we talked about peak

45:25

height balance. We talked about interlocus and interlocus balance.

45:29

This is an amazing profile for heterozygous loci and just great profile balance

45:36

across the entire profile.

45:37

And I can see that the, you know, the peak height balance, the dropout compared

45:43

to Intel. I mean, if you did a heat map, you would definitely see the

45:47

difference.

45:47

What's next on the horizon for your laboratory in RapidGNA?

45:51

Quelling. So we're going to finish the validation for the 2.0 and we're going

45:57

to upgrade all our machines.

45:58

We're going to stick with a small pond with a copy of the Connecticut State

46:03

database for now.

46:04

So once those all get upgraded and at the same time we're growing our program

46:09

or agencies, we just bought another one to go at the OCME, which we're going to

46:15

use for different reasons, which I'm excited about.

46:19

And the mobile band eventually, we will get that going, which is great. So yeah

46:25

, I do think RapidDNA is part of our future.

46:30

I think the technology will evolve even more going forward. But right now, the

46:36

single source profiles that we generate in crime scenes are awesome.

46:40

They've been great with version 2.0 and they've been very helpful with 1.0. So

46:47

yeah, it has been good. It's been good.

46:49

Wonderful. Cheryl, thank you so much for joining me today. We really appreciate

46:54

it.

46:54

No problem. Thank you.

46:56

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