MONTREAL -- Call it CSI: Canada.

A Canadian company that developed a system used in 42 countries to help police match bullets, cartridge casings and criminals is going public with the true science of what TV viewers think is real.

Forensic Technology, developer of the Integrated Ballistics Identification System (IBIS), contributed to a new interactive exhibit that starts touring U.S. science museums beginning Friday in Chicago.

"CSI: The Experience" runs until Sept. 3 at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.

Developed by the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History in Texas, organizers will consider sending it elsewhere after the initial eight-city tour. The exhibit's partners include CBS, producers of CSI, with some financing by the National Science Foundation.

Adults and teens can explore simulated crime scenes, identify and record evidence, do scientific tests and pathology analysis in an autopsy room.

CSI cast members such as William Petersen (Gil Grissom) will "virtually" welcome guests to the exhibit and lead them through the process.

Olivier Perreault-Smith, spokesman for the Montreal company, which pioneered automated ballistics identification in the early 1990s, said its systems have provided actionable investigative leads in more than 60,000 cases -- including 500 "hits" matching guns used in at least two previously unlinked crimes in Canada.

Images for the travelling road show's game came from Forensic Technology's newest IBIS BulletTRAX-3D.

Using a special microscope, the system scans bullets and cartridge casings, v-p Pete Gagliardi said at the 170-employee company's offices in the west-end suburb of Cote Saint-Luc.

"With 3D, we can show examiners what they couldn't see before," said Gagliardi, once head of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in New York. "This technology can take accurate quantitative measurements for the first time."

The three-dimensional system allows examiners to see marks not readily visible to the human eye.

Gagliardi said ballistic expertise dates back to the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago 78 years ago, when U.S. Army Col. Calvin H. Goddard applied his scientific approach and tools to help police solve the slayings of five Chicago gangsters who worked for George "Bugs" Moran, as well as a car mechanic and a visiting optometrist by rival Al "Scarface" Capone's assassins dressed as cops.

Until the late 1990s, Goddard's comparison microscopes and photography, combined with laborious physical examination by forensic experts, were the methods used to match crime scene bullets and cartridge casings with those test-fired in labs.

Today, IBIS technology can find the "needle in the haystack," which Perreault-Smith said suggests possible matches between pairs of spent bullets and cartridge cases, at speeds "well beyond human capacity."

JUDICIAL PROCESS

Forensic experts can give detectives more timely information about crimes. Police count on that to help them get potentially dangerous suspects off the street quickly.

Perreault-Smith said when marketing representatives make pitches to police and judicial agencies, they can draw from tens of thousands of "success stories" of IBIS linking guns with other crimes. The storyboards currently used are from U.S. and Australian cases.

Canadian law enforcement agencies are currently considering releasing information about IBIS success stories in this country, he said. Police, however, must balance the need for the public to be informed and the judicial process to run its course.

In one oft-quoted investigation, Gagliardi said IBIS linked a gun used in Houston, Tex., to a robbery and wallet theft. The match led to a man who used one of the victim's stolen credit cards to buy an adult video. After confessing to the break-in and three murders, the gun was found and he got a death sentence.

To the east, 68-year-old Hazel Love was randomly shot in Alabama by gang members out to collect a debt.

The murder weapon languished for two years in a police vault after being seized at an arson scene four years after her shooting -- until a cop decided to test-fire it, Gagliardi said. An IBIS report had been thrown out, but someone kept the key data. Love's murder, several others and the arson were solved.

Gun data is a massive undertaking in the U.S., where Gagliardi estimated there are 280 million firearms and up to 300,000 yearly gun-related arrests.

Six labs use IBIS in Canada, which became the 26th country to order the system, company president Robert Walsh has told business leaders. One $750,000 unit was installed in 2004 at the Ontario government's Centre of Forensic Sciences (CFS) in Toronto and by early 2006, its IBIS had tied 160 guns to GTA crimes.

Labour-intensive hands-on matches made between bullets and cartridge cases from numerous shootings led to two local gangs rounded up in 2003 and 2004.

In many cases the Forensic Technology's agents must counteract misunderstandings fostered by CSI and similar TV shows.

'CSI EFFECT'

Toronto Police last year began experiencing the negative impact of what American courts and investigators dubbed the "CSI Effect" -- jurors convinced by the Miami- and New York-based TV dramas that all forensic equipment, tests and methods on the shows exist.

Numerous cases have been lost due to expert testimony being disbelieved, as in the case of Robert Blake, acquitted of murdering his wife. Jurors stated the lack of gunshot residue and blood on his hands undermined the case.

Toronto Det.-Const. Wade Knapp first encountered the CSI Effect while trying to tell a jury why he had found no usable burglary evidence at a Scarborough residence.

On the upside, technology-based crime shows have resulted in a major increase in people seeking training in police-style forensics.

"They want to bridge the gap and make it as real as possible," Perrault-Smith said.