Through ajoint agreement with the Indiana-Marion County Forensic Laboratory Services Agency, the Institute for Forensic Imaging conducted a pilot program to investigate crime lab applications of a digital darkroom. IFI installed and staffed a state-of-the-art digital darkroom in the photography laboratory ofthe Indianapolis-Marion County crime lab located at Indianapolis, Indiana. The darkroom consisted of several high resolution color digital cameras, image processing computer, dye sublimation continuous tone digital printers, and CD-ROM writer. This paper describes the use ofthe digital darkroom in several crime lab investigations conducted during the program. INTRODUCTIONDigital image capture and processing is becoming a technically attractive and cost effective alternative to conventional photography in the forensic crime laboratory. Several papers have been published on applications of digital image techniques in forensics, particularly in the fields of latent fingerprints and questioned documents'7 . The modem professional high resolution color digital camera offers forensic examiners new opportunities to increase quality and productivity by being able to combine the existing wealth ofknowledge in optical photographic science with modem digital imaging technology.The Institute for Forensic Imaging (IFI), located on the campus of Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUT) and the Indianapolis-Marion County Forensic Services Agency (IMCFSA) formed a research team to investigate the use of digital cameras and digital image processing technologies in the crime lab under day-to-day working conditions. Digital DarkroomIFI installed and staffed a state-of-the-art digital darkroom in the photography laboratory at IMCFSA. Figure 1 illustrates the major components of the darkroom. The heart of the system is the high resolution color digital camera. Figure 2 shows one ofthe cameras used, the Kodak Professional DCS 420 digital camera . The camera body is a modified Nikon N90 SLR camera. The back ofthe camera, where the film would be normally mounted, has been replaced with a 1K x 1.5K CCD array with 36-bit color. Since the digital camera is based on a standard industry body, this allows for the use of an array of lens, flashes, filters, etc. with known optical properties. Other elements ofthe darkroom included: (1) Intel platform PC workstation with 64MB DRAM memory, 4MB video VRAM memory, and giga-byte (GB) capacity disk drives to support the processing and storage oflarge image files, (2) CD-ROM writer for the archival storage of images, and (3) dyesublimation continuous tone digital printers for generation ofphotographic quality printouts. APPLICATIONSAn array of forensic applications were applied to the digital darkroom during the three month study. Image capture and digital image processing techniques were conducted for latent fingerprints, questioned documents, firearms, missing persons, mugshots, and forensic pathology. The following sections describe in detail three such applications. SPIE Vol...
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.