Patent ID: 7212949

Claim:
An automated system for tool mark analysis comprising an acquisition mechanism for acquiring 3D data of tool marks left on the surfaces of specimens by tools operating on the specimens, said acquisition mechanism being capable of acquiring 3D from impressed tool marks and from striated tool marks; a signature generation module for generating tool mark signatures from the acquired data corresponding to the respective tool marks; an analysis unit for statistically evaluating pairs of the tool mark signatures for impressed tool marks in relation to one another and for statistically evaluating pairs of the tool mark signatures for striated tool marks in relation to one another, said analysis unit being capable of computing a numerical similarity value for each pair of tool mark signatures reflecting the degree of similarity between the tool mark signatures of each pair, said analysis unit employing a frequency domain-based similarity metric to compute a similarity value for each pair of tool mark signatures for impressed tool marks and employing a relative distance similarity metric to compute a similarity value for each pair of tool mark signatures for striated tool marks; and a database in which said similarity values are stored.