Content area
Full text
Automotive paint is one of the best pieces of evidence in hit-and-run accidents and serious crimes involving vehicles.
But car paint fragments bring a serious challenge to forensic science, considering how they vary by make, model, year, texture, chemical composition, and even by how they age and weather. A visual - and subjective - identification by an expert is currently the standard in trials.
Now a team of Belgian scientists have proposed an automated, computer-driven new analytic method of looking at microscopic details of paint flecks to make better, and standardized determinations.
"We propose an objective and automatic approach for the visual analysis based on dark field microscopy," write the authors.
Dark-field microscopy essentially eliminates what's behind...