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AI discovers that Not Every Fingerprint is Unique

AI discovers that not every fingerprint is unique
Saliency map highlights areas that contribute to the similarity between the two fingerprints from the same person. Credit: Gabe Guo,/Columbia Engineering

From “Law and Order” to “CSI,” not to mention real life, investigators have used fingerprints as the gold standard for linking criminals to a crime. But if a perpetrator leaves prints from different fingers in two different crime scenes, these scenes are very difficult to link, and the trace can go cold.

It’s a well-accepted fact in the forensics community that fingerprints of different fingers of the same person—”intra-person fingerprints”—are unique and, therefore, unmatchable.

A team led by Columbia Engineering undergraduate senior Gabe Guo challenged this widely held presumption...

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