Help put image-origin evidence to work
RHEM Labs is seeking partners who can commit operational knowledge, evaluation expertise or engineering capacity to the next stage of SPOT: Sensor Pattern Origin Testing. We want to work with people responsible for deciding which imagery needs attention, and the teams building and evaluating the systems they use.
SPOT examines measurable image-formation characteristics to assess the evidence supporting physical camera capture or synthetic generation. The opportunity is to bring that evidence into investigative workflows early enough to inform the decisions that follow.
Discuss a SPOT evaluation partnership.
The partners we want to work with
Operational partners: law enforcement agencies, victim identification teams, child protection organisations and digital forensic laboratories with a defined image-origin or triage problem. We are particularly interested in teams that can nominate an operational lead, describe their current workflow and help assess whether origin evidence changes a useful decision.
Technical partners: forensic platform developers and investigative tool providers able to explore integration with existing queues, examination tools and reporting systems. A useful starting point is a specific point in the workflow where image-origin evidence could inform the next action.
Evaluation and research partners: researchers and independent testing teams able to contribute representative evaluation design, documented image populations and scrutiny of results. We welcome work that identifies where the method is useful, where it fails and what remains unresolved.
A productive partnership needs a clear question, a responsible point of contact and the capacity to take part in a scoped evaluation. Access to sensitive case material is not a prerequisite for an initial discussion.
What we would evaluate together
The programme should start with a decision your team needs to make. For a victim identification team, that might be whether image-origin evidence adds useful information to an existing prioritisation process. For a platform developer, it might be how to present that evidence within an examiner’s current tools.
Together, we would define:
- The use case: the decision, current workflow and outcome that would make the evaluation worthwhile.
- The test material: representative imagery, known origins where available, processing histories and agreed access arrangements.
- The assessment: error rates, inconclusive results, processing requirements and the effect on investigative decisions.
- The integration: interfaces, deployment constraints and how examiners should receive and interpret the findings.
The intended output is a documented evaluation that supports a decision about further development or integration. Scope, responsibilities, resources, data handling, intellectual property and publication arrangements would be agreed before work begins.
A research foundation you can examine
An implemented SPOT prototype exists. The SPOT research overview explains the method, published experimental results and current evaluation needs. The 2026 peer-reviewed study provides the experimental foundation.
The next stage is to establish how the capability performs on the imagery and within the workflows a partner actually encounters. We are inviting collaborators to help answer that question through a defined programme of work.
Start a partnership discussion
Contact RHEM Labs and select Research enquiry. Begin your message with SPOT evaluation partnership and tell us:
- Your organisation, role and proposed project lead.
- The investigative or technical problem you want to address.
- What your team could contribute: operational input, evaluation capacity, engineering or suitable test imagery.
- Your intended outcome, timeframe and any broad access or deployment constraints.
A short, non-sensitive description is enough for first contact. Do not send CSAM, case evidence or confidential material through the public form or by unsolicited email. Any evaluation involving restricted material would require agreed authority, access and handling arrangements before transfer.
We will use the initial discussion to establish fit and define a practical next step with your team.