Charlton, D; Costa, C; Trindade, G F; Hinder, S; Watts, J F; Bailey, M J (2023) Improving the technological readiness of Time of Flight-Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry for enhancing fingermark recovery - towards operational deployment. Science & Justice, 63 (1). pp. 9-18.

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Abstract

The developers routinely used by police forces to develop fingermarks on casework often do not provide sufficient ridge pattern quality to aid an investigation. Time of Flight-Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) has been proposed as a technique to enhance fingermark recovery. The technique is currently designated a Category C process in the Fingermark Visualisation Manual (FVM) as it shows potential for effective fingermark visualisation but has not yet been fully evaluated. Here the sensitivity of ToF-SIMS on three common exhibit-type surfaces - paper, polyethylene and stainless-steel was compared to standard developers. An adapted Home Office grading scale was used to evaluate the efficacy of fingermark development by ToF-SIMS and to provide a framework for comparison with standard developers. ToF-SIMS was shown to visualise more fingermarks than the respective standard developer, for all surfaces tested. In addition, ToF-SIMS was applied after the standard developers and successfully enhanced the fingermark detail, even when the standard developer failed to visualise ridge detail. This demonstrates the benefit for incorporating it into current operational fingermark development workflows. Multivariate analysis (MVA), using simsMVA, was additionally explored as a method to simplify the data analysis and image generation process.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	Nanoscience > Surface and Nanoanalysis
Divisions:	Chemical & Biological Sciences
Identification number/DOI:	10.1016/j.scijus.2022.10.004
Last Modified:	02 Sep 2024 13:25
URI:	https://eprintspublications.npl.co.uk/id/eprint/9990