Journal de médecine légale

Biometrics in Forensic Identification: Applications and Challenges

Abstract

Monika Saini and Anup Kumar Kapoor

Accurate and efficient identification have become a vital requirement for forensic application due to diversities of criminal activities. A recent advancement in biometric technologywhich is equipped with computational intelligence techniques is replacing manual identification approaches in forensic science. Biometrics is a fundamental verification mechanism that identifies individuals on the basis of their physiological and behavioral features. These biometric expansions are easily observable in different forensic identification areas, e.g. face, fingerprint, iris, voice, handwriting, etc. The effectiveness of biometricssystem lies in different recognition processes which include feature extraction, feature robustness and feature matching. The emergence of forensic biometrics covers a wide range of applications for physical and cybercrime detection. Forensic Biometrics also overcomes the loopholes of traditional identification system that were based on personal probabilities. It is considered as a fundamental shift in the way criminals are detected. The present study describes the contribution and limitations of biometric science in the field of forensic identification.