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Enhanced imaging of developed fingerprints using mass spectrometry imaging

2013; Royal Society of Chemistry; Volume: 138; Issue: 21 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1039/c3an01204b

1364-5528

Melanie J. Bailey, Mahado Ismail, Stephen M. Bleay, Nicholas J. Bright, M. Levin Elad, Yair Cohen, Bram J. Geller, D. Everson, Catia Costa, R.P. Webb, John F. Watts, Marcel de Puit,

Isotope Analysis in Ecology

Latent fingermarks are invisible to the naked eye and normally require the application of a chemical developer followed by an optical imaging step in order to visualize the ridge detail. If the finger deposition is poor, or the fingermark is aged, it can sometimes be difficult to produce an image of sufficient quality for identification. In this work, we show for the first time how mass spectrometry imaging (in this case time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry, ToF-SIMS) can be used to enhance the quality of partially recovered fingermarks. We show three examples of how chemical imaging can be used to obtain enhanced images of fingermarks deposited on aluminium foil, glass and the handle of a hand grenade compared with conventional development techniques.