ABSTRACT
Laser detection of latent fingerprints is often regarded as a procedure on equal footing with, for instance, cyanoacrylate ester fuming, ninhydrin treatment, or dusting. Absorption/reflectance thus constitutes the essence of conventional fingerprint development. In case of a faintly developed print, when very little powder adheres to the fingerprint, ridge sites reflect incident light only very slightly less than the surrounding paper. Laser latent fingerprint development, which should more generally be called fingerprint development by photoluminescence, on the other hand, is a general method. However, since the early 80’s, there have been attempts to replace the laser as the source for fluorescence excitation with conventional lamps. Because a very small portion of the lamp spectrum must be isolated, which presents many problems, these lamps have so far not been shown to be competitive with lasers in sensitivity.
