Forensic human image identification using medical indicators

Abstract

Diseases not only bring troubles to people’s body functions and mind but also influence the appearances and behaviours of human beings. Similarly, we can analyse the diseases from people’s appearances and behaviours and use the personal medical history for human identification. In this article, medical indicators presented in abnormal changes of human appearances and behaviours caused by physiological or psychological diseases were introduced, and were applied in the field of forensic identification of human images, which we called medical forensic identification of human images (mFIHI). The proposed method analysed the people’s medical signs by studying the appearance and behaviour characteristics depicted in images or videos, and made a comparative examination between the medical indicators of the questioned human images and the corresponding signs or medical history of suspects. Through a conformity and difference analysis on medical indicators and their indicated diseases, it would provide an important information for human identification from images or videos. A case study was carried out to demonstrate and verify the feasibility of the proposed method of mFIHI, and our results showed that it would be important contents and angles for forensic expert manual examination in forensic human image identification.

Keywords

• forensic sciences
• medical indicators
• forensic identification of human images
• medical diseases