FORENSIC APPLICATIONS OF INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY

Abstract

Infrared (IR) spectroscopy has been extensively used for the examination of trace evidence in a forensic field since it is non-destructive, rapid, objective, operator-independent and confirmatory technique.  Such traces can be obtained from biological resources such as hair, blood, fingerprints and non-biological resources such as drug, gun-shot residue etc. The fingerprints which is unique per person, and the age of blood stains have been analyzed efficiently and succesfully without destruction of the sample by IR spectroscopy. Moreover, posmortem time interval was estimated by the spectral analysis of metabolic changes in the tissues. This technique has been also successfully used in the characterization and screening of illicit drugs, explosives and inks etc.

The use of IR spectroscopy in Forensic Science started in 1970s with identification illicit drugs.  Employement of Fourier transform processing in 1990s enabled to investigate different type of samples, including aqueous samples with increased speed and sensitivity. Therefore, with the development of instrumentation and the use of advanced chemometric analysis methods, these techniques have recently become more popular in forenscis science.  The development of the attenuated total reflectance (ATR) unit enabled the investigaton of systems without the need for complex sample preparation. With the development of sophisticated techniques such as synchrotron radiation-Fourier transform infrared microscopy in conjunction with advanced statistical analyses, chemical properties of bulk and micro-sized particles can be identified. In this presentation, forensic application of infrared spectroscopy on determination of postmortem interval, hair analysis, fingerprint analysis, body fluids, drug analysis explosives will be specifically mentioned.

Keywords

• FORENSIC APPLICATIONS OF INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY

Kaynakça

1. Feride SEVERCAN, Nihal Simsek OZEK
2. Department of Biological Sciences, Middle East Technical University, 06800 Ankara, Turkey. Department of Biology, Atatürk University, 25240 Erzurum, Turkey