Spectrochemical Analysis and Hyperspectral Imaging of Latent Fingerprints

Abstract

Summary This work has been undertaken to gain an understanding of the chemicalcomposition of latent prints so that new methods of developing finger-print images can be explored. Children’s fingerprints have been an importantaspect of this work. Additionally, methods of imaging fingerprints fromelectro-optical responses obtained through spectrometers have beeninvestigated 1 . This process is often referred to as hyperspectral imaging. Introduction In certain instances latent fingerprints cannot be acquired by existingmethods. Frequently caseworkers have reported that the recovery of children’sprints at a crime scene is difficult or not possible. Therefore, there isinterest in the forensic community to improve understanding of the chemicalcharacter of latent fingerprints with an emphasis on children’s prints sothat current techniques can be modified or new ones developed.Previous work has been done by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry(GC/MS) 2 . The disadvantage of GC/MS is that it is destructive, and sampleacquisition is from a large area and, therefore, is not specific to smallindividual heterogeneous components. Infrared analysis, however, can beused noninvasively on small areas of the ridge material to identify specificchemical components.

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