Watch your step!
A frustrated total internal reflection approach to forensic footwear imaging
J. A. Needham & J. S. Sharp
See also the instructional videos on "Footwear Impressions"
Forensic image retrieval and processing are vital tools in the ight against crime e.g. during fingerprint capture. However, despite recent advances in machine vision technology and image processing techniques (and contrary to the claims of popular fiction) forensic image retrieval is still widely being performed using outdated practices involving inkpads and paper. Ongoing changes in government policy, increasing crime rates and the reduction of forensic service budgets increasingly require that evidence be gathered and processed more rapidly and efficiently. A consequence of this is that new, low-cost imaging technologies are required to simultaneously increase the quality and throughput of the processing of evidence. This is particularly true in the burgeoning field of forensic footwear analysis, where images of shoe prints are being used to link individuals to crime scenes. Here we describe one such approach based upon frustrated total internal reflection imaging that can be used to acquire images of regions where shoes contact rigid surfaces.
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How to cite this article: Needham, J. A. and Sharp, J. S. Watch your step! A frustrated total internal reflection approach to forensic footwear imaging. Sci. Rep. 6, 21290; doi: 10.1038/srep21290 (2016).
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction, provided the original work is properly cited and not changed in any way.