NCJ Number
239119
Journal
Journal of Forensic Identification Volume: 62 Issue: 4 Dated: July/August 2012 Pages: 349-367
Date Published
August 2012
Length
19 pages
Annotation
This study compared the effectiveness of three imaging systems with UV-C light sources to recover fingerprints.
Abstract
Since the early part of the 20th century, ultraviolet (UV) radiation has been used to search and image forensic evidence. In particular, UV-C radiation (100-280 nm wavelength) was first noted to recover untreated fingerprints from porous and nonporous substrates in the 1970s, with commercial systems being developed to exploit this in the later 1990s. Advances in digital imaging technology have since revolutionized this technique, making it much more practical. The three systems evaluated in the current research were a UV-C-sensitive, back-thinned CCD and camera system, a UV-C-sensitive image intensifier, and a flatbed scanner fitted with a UV-C light source. The number and quality of fingerprints recovered by the three systems were compared. Fingerprints were deposited on porous and nonporous surfaces and then were examined using the aforementioned systems; however, it was not possible to use the scanner to recover fingerprints from the nonporous surface. The results show that the camera system with a back-thinned CCD detected the most high-quality fingerprints from the surfaces considered. (Published Abstract)