Laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry imaging: A personal identification based on a gunshot residue analysis on latent fingerprints

Abstract A new laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry imaging (LA-ICP-MSI) method has been developed to visualize latent fingerprint of suspect persons possibly related to a criminal offence committed with a gun. Metallic impurities and metallic gunshot residues (GSRs) adhered on a latent fingerprint can link biometric information and shooting. The identification and spatial distribution of characteristic gunshot-related metals (Cu, Zn, Sb, Ba, Hg, Pb) was studied in detail. Observed limits of detection for the corresponding metals were below 0.3 ng cm −2 . The distributions of the selected metals were simply transferred to images of fingerprints that can reveal a person somehow manipulating with a gun while the presence of characteristic and consistent GSR particles provided the evidence of the shooting. LA-ICP-MSI has been proved to be a unique tool in dactyloscopic identification of a suspect person from latent and commonly visualized fingerprints.