University of New Haven, Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Science, Forensic Science Department, 300 Boston Post Rd, West Haven, CT 06516, United States.
Forensic Sci Int. 2022 Nov;340:111423. doi: 10.1016/j.forsciint.2022.111423. Epub 2022 Aug 13.
This article further investigates the suitability of an inkless method to obtain and maintain exemplar fingerprint recordings on thermal paper; in this case, stored for 1.5 years at different temperatures. Inkless impressions were (re-)examined by optical means via two independent methods. First, an automated metric from the FBI's Universal Latent Workstation (ULW) was adapted (i.e., BlueGreen color-coded maps) to evaluate visual differences among inkless fingerprint sets with respect to storage time, temperature, relative humidity, and biological sex. Additionally, a conventional assessment system was applied, a categorical quality score (QS) metric that ranges on a grading scale from 1 to 4. Results revealed that storage time (72 weeks), as well as a colder temperature (~ 3 ºC) and lower relative humidity (~ 12 %), had little impact on the preservation of ridge clarity when compared to freshly deposited counterparts. A biological sex effect was again detected, but its influence was not significant under certain conditions. Despite minor visual differences, the ridge clarity of the inkless impressions remained stable for the duration of the experiment. The stability and durability of the proposed inkless method were proven, becoming a potential alternative to the conventional black ink method.
本文进一步研究了一种无墨方法在热敏纸上获取和保存指纹记录的适用性；在这种情况下，将其在不同温度下储存 1.5 年。通过两种独立的方法，通过光学手段（重新）检查无墨痕迹。首先，适应了 FBI 的通用潜伏工作站（ULW）的自动度量（即，蓝绿色编码地图），以评估无墨指纹集在存储时间、温度、相对湿度和性别方面的视觉差异。此外，还应用了常规评估系统，即分类质量评分（QS）度量，范围从 1 到 4 级。结果表明，与新鲜沉积的指纹相比，存储时间（72 周）以及较低的温度（约 3°C）和相对湿度（约 12%）对脊线清晰度的保存影响很小。再次检测到性别影响，但在某些条件下，其影响并不显著。尽管存在细微的视觉差异，但无墨痕迹的脊线清晰度在实验期间保持稳定。所提出的无墨方法的稳定性和耐久性得到了证明，成为传统黑墨方法的潜在替代方法。
