Automatic forensic analysis of automotive paints using optical microscopy.

The timely identification of vehicles involved in an accident, such as a hit-and-run situation, bears great importance in forensics. To this end, procedures have been defined for analyzing car paint samples that combine techniques such as visual analysis and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. This work proposes a new methodology in order to automate the visual analysis using image retrieval. Specifically, color and texture information is extracted from a microscopic image of a recovered paint sample, and this information is then compared with the same features for a database of paint types, resulting in a shortlist of candidate paints. In order to demonstrate the operation of the methodology, a test database has been set up and two retrieval experiments have been performed. The first experiment quantifies the performance of the procedure for retrieving exact matches, while the second experiment emulates the real-life situation of paint samples that experience changes in color and texture over time.

Nylon flocked swab severely reduces Hexagon Obti sensibility.

Hexagon Obti immunological blood test and flocked swab are widely used in forensic laboratories. Nevertheless, up to now, no compatibility tests have been published between sampling with the ethylene oxide treated flocked swab and the Hexagon Obti blood detection strip. In this study, we investigated this compatibility. Our work shows that sampling with ethylene oxide treated flocked swab reduces by a factor of at least 100 the detection threshold of blood using the Hexagon Obti immunological test.