Forensic applications of Raman spectroscopy for thein situanalyses of pigments and dyes in ink and paint evidence

Abstract

Raman spectroscopy has proven to be a very useful tool for the forensic examination of various colored evidence, including its use in identifying pigments and dyes in paint and inks. Because both paint and inks consist of complex heterogeneous matrices, forensic scientists typically use a battery of different tests to characterize them, with each method contributing information that will be evaluated and integrated to produce an overall compositional profile. The contribution of the Raman method for the examination of these types of evidentiary materials will be described as well as the factors, which will show why this technique is suitable for the forensic endeavor. The literature offers abundant examples that show how Raman spectroscopy produces data that provide a very high degree of discrimination between samples, can perform non‐destructive microscopical in situ analyses, requires minimal or no sample preparation, and produces data that can be easily stored for database purposes. In this review article, a comprehensive review of the forensic applications of Raman spectroscopy for the characterization, differentiation, comparison, and identification of trace evidence and questioned documents, consisting of paint and ink, respectively, is presented. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Recent advances in linear and non‐linear Raman spectroscopy. Part XI

“…Buzzini and Suzuki described forensic applications of Raman spectroscopy for the in situ analyses of pigments and dyes in ink and paint evidence. In this review, a comprehensive perspective of the forensic applications of Raman spectroscopy for the characterization, differentiation, comparison, and identification of trace evidence and questioned documents, consisting of paint and ink, respectively, is presented . Doty et al address the issue of what can Raman spectroscopy do for criminalistics.…”

Raman Spectroscopy of cultural heritage Materials: Overview of Applications and New Frontiers in Instrumentation, Sampling Modalities, and Data Processing

“…3.4. It is well known that in the past 15 years numerous excellent reviews and special issues of journals (especially the Journal of Raman Spectroscopy) have been dedicated to in-depth overviews of all manners of application of Raman spectroscopy in art, archaeology, forensics, and gemology, and the reader is referred to these for a comprehensive treatment of the subject [24,48,77,103,171,283,284,294,296]. Many dedicated books are also available [68,76,125].…”

Hyperspectral imaging coupled with chemometric analysis for non-invasive differentiation of black pens

“…This step included hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), which is the basis for spectral classification and gives a general overview of the existing relationship in a dataset; principal component analysis (PCA), as a fast and robust method of spectral classification and analysis; and spectral angle mapper (SAM), an efficient and conceptually simple method that gives information about the spectral similarity of selected spectra. HCA and PCA have already proved to be powerful tools for discriminating between other types of writing media [7,23], while SAM seems to be applied for this purpose for the first time. The combination of HSI with chemometric methods offers an easy methodology that does not require any expensive equipment and could be applied for routine analysis in the forensic laboratory.…”