New technology helps determine when fingerprints appear

According to information from CNET magazine published on June 4, the police may soon use a new technology, developed by researchers at the Netherlands Institute of Forensic Medicine, capable of accurately determining the time of appearance of fingerprints.

Breakthrough in determining when fingerprints appear. (Photo: Shutterstock)

This technology helps to accurately determine the time of fingerprint appearance, with an error range of 1 to 2 days, provided that the fingerprint appeared within the last 15 days.

This technology currently does not allow for hourly or minutely determination, however this breakthrough can continue to be researched, developed and refined to move towards hourly and minutely determination.

“Being able to determine the time of fingerprint appearance can help you determine when a suspect was present at a crime scene or which fingerprints are relevant to the investigation,” said researcher Marcel de Puit of the Netherlands Institute of Forensic Medicine.

Fingerprinting, an investigative method dating back to the late 19th century, uses unique traces left after a bare finger touches an object's surface to identify the individual whose fingerprint it is.

Fingers leave behind sweat and sebum (a mixture of amino acids, chlorides, fatty acids, etc.). Previous attempts to date fingerprints relied heavily on the correlation between these mixtures, but were unsuccessful.

Research by a team of scientists at the Netherlands Institute of Forensic Medicine has found that the correlations of these mixtures in relation to each other are key to measuring their time of appearance.

“The chemicals in fingerprints are completely analyzable,” says De Puit. “Some of them disappear over time and it is the ratio of those chemicals that allows us to determine when the fingerprint was created.”

The amino acids in fingerprints can also be used to further identify an individual. For example, if you drink too many diet drinks, the amino acids will remain in your body and may be left on your fingerprints.

This technology will need more time to continue researching and testing on real cases to strengthen the basic fingerprint data before being used in criminal proceedings.

The Forensic Institute's research team is hoping that agencies and organizations such as the FBI or New Scotland Yard will take notice and be interested in this research to test it, and they also hope that this work will be applied within a year./.

According to Vietnam+