A Comparison of Thermal Fingerprint Development to Current Recommended Chemical Development Techniques on Porous Surfaces

Although heat has been used to develop latent prints in the past, recently published material has renewed interest in this visualization method. The Thermal Fingerprint Developer 2 (TFD-2), an automated device that uses heat to produce fluorescent prints on porous surfaces, was recently introduced t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of forensic identification Vol. 66; no. 4; p. 326
Main Authors Mostowtt, Thaddeus, Ramotowski, Robert S, Morgan, John P
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Alameda International Association for Identification 01.07.2016
Subjects
Forensic sciences
Heat
Latent fingerprints
Visualization
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Summary:Although heat has been used to develop latent prints in the past, recently published material has renewed interest in this visualization method. The Thermal Fingerprint Developer 2 (TFD-2), an automated device that uses heat to produce fluorescent prints on porous surfaces, was recently introduced to the forensic marketplace. An evaluation of this new thermal method was conducted in three phases. In Phase I, the optimal conditions (scan speed, power setting, and number of scans) for the TFD-2 instrument were determined. In Phase II, a direct comparison using split-depletion prints was conducted between the TFD-2 and several common operational visualization techniques for porous surfaces (1,2-indanedione-zinc, ninhydrin, and PD). In Phase Ill, the impact of incorporating the TFD-2 in standard latent print processing sequences was evaluated. Overall, Phase II results indicated that conventional chemical processes outperformed the TFD-2. Phase III results indicated that using the TFD-2 first in a processing sequence could adversely affect the success of subsequent treatments.
ISSN:0895-173X