Phase sensitive spectral domain optical coherence tomography for latent fingerprint detection

Despite the advances made in areas such as DNA profiling, fingerprints are still considered to be the best form of personal identification for criminal investigation purposes. A variety of physical chemical and optical techniques are available for the enhancement and detection of latent fingerprints. However, existing frequently-used fingerprint detection methods show some disadvantages such as harm to fingerprints, slow extraction, potential side effects, leaving trails, high contrast demand and so on. A new method based on phase sensitive spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) for latent fingerprints detection is proposed. This method has advantages of non-contact non-destructive, high-speed and high-sensitivity. The experimentel results demonstrate that using this method to deal with fingerprints of low contrast also leads to satisfactory results, proving that the sensitivity of SD-OCT can be used for accurate and reliable patent fingerprint recognition.