how are ear prints obtained

Are ear prints unique?

Ears are actually unique to each and every person, so much so that they are comparable in uniqueness to the fingerprint. Research has even suggested that ears may be a more effective identification tool than a fingerprint through the use of a new “image ray transform” technology.

Are ear prints class or individual evidence?

It is believed that ear prints are unique to each individual adult, and are considered difficult to tamper with (fingerprints can sometimes be altered).

Do ears have prints?

It is possible to recognise someone from even a fuzzy picture of their ear with 99.6% accuracy. Since the 1950s, forensic scientists been using measurements of suspects' ears to match them to prints left behind at the scenes of crimes.

Are ear prints acceptable evidence in court?

Use in court Ear prints are not accepted as reliable evidence in court cases. In court cases, definitions used to define the evidence of ear prints are not completely assertive. Wording such as "there is 'high probability' the ear print was made by the suspect" is used.

What are three problems with fingerprint evidence?

The fingerprint was not made by (excluded to) a known source. The fingerprint cannot be identified or excluded to a known source (inconclusive). The fingerprint is of no value to compare (not suitable for comparison) to a known source.

How accurate are ear biometrics?

Researchers fuse face, ear images. Researchers in a multinational team say they have created a biometric recognition system that uses three-dimensional images of faces and ears together that is 99.25 percent accurate with an 0.75 percent error rate threshold.

How ears are scanned?

The first area of the ear that you will scan is the canal using the ring scan. Next, you would scan the flatter areas of the outside of the ear using the line laser. Then you finish off scanning with the curvy parts of the outside of the ear. The scanner walks you through this process.

What did doctors use to visualize ears?

An otoscope is an instrument which is used to look into the ear canal. The ear speculum (a cone-shaped viewing piece of the otoscope) is slowly inserted into the ear canal while looking into the otoscope. The speculum is angled slightly toward the person's nose to follow the canal.

Is fingerprinting individual evidence?

Why are fingerprints useful? Properties that make a fingerprint useful for ID: It's unique characteristic ridges which make them individual evidence.

Are fingerprints considered individual or class characteristics?

Individual Characteristics are properties of physical evidence that can be attributed to a common source with a high degree of certainty. Examples of individual evidence include anything that contains nuclear DNA, toolmarks, and fingerprints.

What type of evidence are prints?

Impression evidence is created when two objects come in contact with enough force to cause an "impression." Typically impression evidence is either two-dimensional — such as a fingerprint — or three-dimensional — such as the marks on a bullet caused by the barrel of a firearm.

Are fingerprints class or trace evidence?

Perhaps the most common type of trace evidence examiners look for at a crime scene, fingerprints are a special type of trace evidence. Fingerprints are considered to be unique, or individualizing, trace evidence. That means that fingerprints can be linked to an individual person, not a type of person.

Why did Hirschi take ear prints?

Hirschi discovered that one of the two suspects had an ear print significantly similar to the ear mark at the first burglar y, convincing Hirschi that he was involved with the most recent burglary.

What is ear print analysis?

Ear print analysis is used as a means of forensic identification intended as an identification tool similar to fingerprinting. An ear print is a two-dimensional reproduction of the parts of the outer ear that have touched a specific surface (most commonly the helix, antihelix, tragus and antitragus ). Ear prints and their use for identification was first discovered by Fritz Hirschi in 1965. Fritz Hirschi was the first to identify a criminal in Switzerland in 1965 and ear print analysis has also been successfully used to solve crimes in the UK and the Netherlands. In addition to identification, the height of an ear imprint at a crime scene may also provide investigators with information regarding the stature of the perpetrator.

Why is FearID not valid?

This is due to the inability to control the force suspects place on the glass. Suspects may not cooperate, and prints may not be representative of reality.

Why are ear prints not common in court?

The use of ear prints in court is not common due to factors such as the subjectivity of value given to a print and the forensic examiner's experience.

What are the factors that affect ear print analysis?

Ear print analysis can be greatly affected by certain factors: How long the suspect's ear was in contact with the surface, and the applied force. Smudging or sliding occurring on surface. The quality of surface (glass and metal have greater potential for detailed prints) Secretion of oils or waxes on the ear.

What is fear ID?

Forensic Ear Identification (FearID) research project commenced in 2002 to analyse the use of ear print evidence in criminal investigations. The project was sponsored by the European Union and was composed of nine institutes from the United Kingdom, Italy and Netherlands.

Why was Mark Dallagher's conviction dropped?

In January 2004, the conviction was dropped due to DNA testing that found his DNA was not a match with the earmark found at the scene.

Why do people put ear prints on doors?

A benefit to the collection of ear prints along with other crime scene evidence is in its use as confirmatory data: the legal system typically requires two different types of corroborative evidence in order to confirm placement of a suspect at a crime scene . While it is possible to "plant" fingerprints or even DNA material, it is difficult to intentionally place an ear print, particularly before ear prints become a common form of forensic identification, at a crime scene.

What is the purpose of ear prints?

When a human ear is pressed against a surface, materials present on the ear's surface (waxes, skin oils, etc.) are left behind, forming a two-dimensional "ear print." Each ear print is believed to contain specific and individual (unique) anatomical markers, which can be used both to distinguish it from others found at the crime scene, and to compare it to other ear prints on file in forensic databases as a means of identifying suspects or linking crimes/crime scenes, much like occurs with DNA profiling at present. It is also possible to take ear prints from suspects under laboratory conditions (akin to those used for fingerprint or serological DNA testing and analysis), and compare those prints to ear prints recovered during the crime scene investigation . It is believed that ear prints are unique to each individual adult, and are considered difficult to tamper with (fingerprints can sometimes be altered).

Is there evidence for ear prints?

At present, there is a paucity of scientific evidence supporting the use of ear prints in forensic investigations. There has not been incontrovertible research evidence that ear prints are unique to each individual; there is a lack of systematization in the collection and analysis of ear print data; and there has not been widespread development or usage of automated ear print matching technology. These issues are being addressed via the European Union 's FEARID program, spearheaded by Cornelius van der Lugt at the ICR in the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom 's National Training Centre for Scientific Support to Crime Investigation's systematic collection of ear prints in an effort to establish a comprehensive research-based database that is sufficiently large to be able to address the issue of uniqueness.

Is ear print analysis more reliable than DNA?

The assumption among members of the EU forensic science community is that forensic analysis of ear prints is more economical than that of DNA profiling . It is also thought to be more reliable in legal proceedings, as it is virtually impossible to either tamper with, or accidentally leave at a crime scene, an ear print.

Does Encyclopedia have page numbers?

Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Refer to each style’s convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates.

Why is ear print important in forensics?

Significance of Ear print in Forensic science. 1. The print left at the scene of offence can help to eliminate or prove the presence or absence of particular person at the scene. 2. Though difficult, Individualization from ear print is not impossible. 3. It can also be used to compare against the database where there is no suspect in the case. 4.

How is forensic analysis done?

Analysis is either done by Superimposing of photographs or side by side comparison. In Some cases digitalized method can also be used. Though there is not so far well-developed digitalized method, European Union’s “The Forensic Ear Identification (FearID)” research project was initiated in order to study the reliability of evidence of ear prints found on scene of offence. It is also into the process of building a database for ear prints that can be used worldwide.

Why is individualization criticized?

1. It is largely criticized because the process for individualization was found to be Subjective.

What are the characteristics of an ear print?

Like fingerprints, Ear print too has specific characteristics which can be their shape such as. · Oval type –side edges of the print are rounded along with width measured at tragus level is smaller than half ear length. It is found to be most common type of form. · Circular type –Edges of the prints are rounded.

What is the use of the shape and size of the ear?

Shape and size of the ear can be used for facial reconstruction in forensic Investigation as per proved by some researchers [3] [13].

Why is the human ear considered distinctive?

The human ear is regarded as distinctive due its absolute morphological arrangement as shape of the ear, size and formation of the tragus, thickness and earlobe, helix Shape, Darwin’s tubercle forms, Unique and special characteristics of the ear, etc.

What are the factors that affect the ear print pattern?

Factors affecting the ear print pattern. 1. Surface over which print being deposited affects the quality of print. Smooth surfaces provide good quality impression compared to that of irregular surface. 2. The pressure applied by the individual during the contact. It may either give fragmented or complete impression. 3.

How many striking similarities were described in the earprint of the other man?

ear. For the earprint of the other man, five striking similarities were described. This process

What is the ear biometric?

Ear is a new class of relatively stable biometric that is invariant from childhood to old age . It is not affected with facial expressions, cosmetics and eye glasses. Human ear is one of the representative human biometrics with uniqueness and stability. Ear Recognition for Personal Identification using 2-D ear from a side face image is a challenging problem. This paper analyzes the efficiency of using texture features such as Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM), Local Binary Pattern (LBP) and Gabor Filter for the recognition of ears. The combination of three feature vectors was experimented with. It is found that the combination gives better results compared to when the features were used in isolation. Further, it is found that the recognition accuracy improves by extracting local texture features extracted from sub-images. The proposed technique is tested using an ear database which contains 442 ear images of 221 subjects and obtained 94.12% recognition accuracy.

How to improve robustness against variation in shooting angles?

To improve the robustness against variation in shooting angles, we previously proposed using an asymptotic expansion of the Gabor transform of ear images to compute the Gabor features of other poses and using these estimates in multiple linear discriminant analysis to enhance feature discriminability. Extending this study, the accuracies are compared with other standard methods that can be used to compute feature vectors for other poses, as in principal component analysis and multiple regression analysis.

What is the estimation method for ear biometrics?

To improve on our earlier work on single-view-based ear biometrics, an estimation method is presented for the shooting angle of an ear image based on the summation of similarity scores over a threshold within a database of known shooting angles. Experimental results indicate that the estimation method can improve the robustness of ear recognition in varied poses.

What is the area before any crime is co mmitted?

area before any crime is co mmitted (e.g., on the outside of a building befor e a break-in).

How long did the house of the murdered woman last?

house o f the murdered woman withi n the three to four week s period leading up to the murder.

What does "lis ting" mean?

someone is intentionally lis ting at a door or window. This m a y decisively place the listener at

Overview

FearID project

The Forensic Ear Identification (FearID) research project commenced in 2002 to analyse the use of ear print evidence in criminal investigations. The project was sponsored by the European Union and was composed of nine institutes from the United Kingdom, Italy and Netherlands.
The project used 1229 donors who donated three left and right ear prints. The ear prints were collected using controlled methods. Donors pressed their ear up to a glass plate and were instru…

History

Limitations of ear print analysis

Use in court

Future possibilities