This audio and its transcript cover three presentations of a panel on using research to strengthen the disciplines related to impression evidence, which was part of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) 2010 Conference.
Tom Busey - forensic policy program manager of NIJ's Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences - describes research in which he is involved that is attempting to develop software capable of viewing data in the same manner as the human eye while being directed to critical areas of data that experts view in making matches of impression evidence, such as fingerprints. Lynn Abbott - associate professor of the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech - discusses his work on a NIJ-funded project titled "Establishing the Quantitative Basis for Sufficiency Thresholds and Metrics for Friction Ridge Pattern Detail Quality and the Foundation for a Standard." The research's objective is to establish a quantitative basis that can be used to develop a sufficiency analysis for fingerprint image quality, leading to a scientific measure of confidence in an examiner's decision regarding latent prints. Sargur Srihari - a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of the State University of New York at Buffalo - discusses his research on the characterization of uncertainty in decisions regarding matching impression evidence, with attention to handwriting and footwear analysis.