ABSTRACT
In conventional forensic science for criminalistics applications, the assessment of latent human (dermatoglyphic) fingerprints and palm prints is a long-standing and valuable investigative technique [1]. It is fundamentally an exercise in pattern recognition, where the print ridge characteristics of a questioned specimen are compared with those of one or more suspects or with those of a larger subject population within a searchable database. A computer is often used to narrow the number of comparison possibilities, but the ultimate determination of match quality is made by a professional print examiner. For criminal prosecution, the minimum number of equivalent ridge points required to declare a match between questioned sample and known print can vary among different jurisdictions. Nonetheless, print visualization and examination have been productive forensic techniques for more than a century, and the underlying tenet remains that no two individuals have exactly the same ridge attributes.
