Differentiating individuals through the chemical composition of their fingermarks

Fingermark patterns are one of the oldest means of biometric identification. During this last decade, the molecules that constitute the fingermark residue have gained interest among the forensic research com-munity to gain additional intelligence regarding its donor profile including its gender, age, lifestyle or even its pathological state. In this work, the molecular composition of fingermarks have been studied to monitor the variability between donors and to explore its capacity to differentiate individuals using supervised multi-class classification models. Over one year, fingermarks from thirteen donors have been analysed by Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionisation Mass Spectrometry Imaging (n = 716) and mined by different machine learning approaches. We demonstrate the potential of the fingermark chemical composition to help differentiating individuals with an accuracy between 80% and 96% depending on the period of sample collection for each donor and size of the pool of donors. It would be premature at this stage to transpose the results of this research to real cases, however the conclusions of this study can provide a better under-standing of the variations of the chemical composition of the fingermark residue in between individuals over long periods and help clarifying the notion of donorship.(c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

Fingermark patterns have long been used for biometric identification. Recent research has focused on the molecular composition of fingermark residue to gather information about the donor's profile. By analyzing fingermarks from thirteen donors using machine learning approaches, we demonstrate the potential of fingermark chemical composition to differentiate individuals with an accuracy ranging from 80% to 96%. While it is premature to apply these results to real cases, this study provides insights into the chemical variations of fingermark residue and helps clarify the notion of donorship.