TECHNOLOGY
CSIR fingerprint scanner can give police a leg up
Groundbreaking CSIR’s technology creates a 3D reconstruction of deeper layers of skin to reduce the effect of smudging, writes Sarah Wild
At the continent’s largest research council, scientists have turned an office into a crime scene. Rethabile Khutlang, a Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) biometric research engineer, is quick to reassure that it is not an actual crime scene. They are performing a trial on their new technology — a three-dimensional fingerprint scanner that Khutlang hopes will find its way into the South African Police Service (SAPS) to help in identifying criminals. "A crime scene is not a sterile lab … so we placed fingerprints all over the office on different substrates, and the idea was that these fingerprints were left by the burglar," he explains. The police use fingerprints, DNA and dental imprints to identify people, but criminals are more likely to leave a fingerprint than a bite mark. The first fingerprint was used to identify — and convict — a murderer in 1902. But even though the technology has been available for more than a century, it still has drawbacks. Every person...
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