The Canberra Times revealed on Wednesday that the Australian Federal Police, in collaboration with Victoria Police and researchers from the University of Canberra and Queensland Institute of Medical Research, were developing a test that could allow police to use a tiny scrap of DNA evidence from a crime scene to identify physical characteristics of potential suspects.

Using only a piece of skin or a spot of blood, scientists are trying to tell, among other features, if a person had a cleft chin or attached earlobes, and to uncover their biogeographic ancestry.

Although it was still a long way off, researchers said the ultimate goal was to develop a DNA test to create a picture of what a potential suspect might look like.

ANU criminology lecturer Emmeline Taylor said she was concerned that the Australian research could encourage the type of behaviour seen after the recent Boston bombings, where amateur investigators scanned crowd images for people who stood out for their visual ethnicity, a process one news source termed a "racist Where's Wally".

She said DNA profiling could not predict features that fundamentally changed how a person looked, such as lost teeth, malnutrition, scars and tattoos.

"I'd be very concerned if these photo fits are going to be quite crude depictions of people, based essentially on their ethnic and racial characteristics," she said.

Dr Taylor said while the developing science on DNA was "fascinating", Australia did not have a legislative framework to begin using such sensitive information to identify suspects.

She said there was a danger that, once developed, the technology could be misused in other settings.

"What you quite often find with what I would call any sort of surveillance information is you always have significant function creep, so what now might seem like quite a useful technology within policing, people then think that could be quite useful for insurance or health purposes," she said.

The director of Civil Liberties Australia, Tim Vines, said there was a risk that DNA profiling would lead to false information going out to the public or cases of mistaken identity.

"We're interested in seeing how the science develops in this way, but feel the public should understand that there are limitations in our understanding of how our genes affect our appearance, and that there's not going to be a silver bullet when it comes to DNA testing and the identification of who actually did it," he said.

Dr Taylor was also concerned that some racial groups could come to be seen to be inherently criminal, ignoring the social dynamics that underpin criminal behaviour.

"Before we start to use this type of data in practice, there needs to be that kind of discussion to set the parameters around usage, what are our expectations around privacy and where do we draw the boundaries," she said.