Automatic feature extraction for forensic purposes

This paper presents some research work that has been undertaken in the area of software tools for forensic document analysis. The purpose of research into this area is to study the methods used by human experts in the forensic analysis and examination of questioned hand-written documents and to formulate computer tools to assist in this task. The computer tools needed will require image processing and pattern recognition techniques. As part of this research a system for automatic identification of the author of hand-written documents is being investigated. Such systems usually attempt to match a questioned document to a known sample from a large database. It is hoped that by investigating methods that can be used to solve this problem it will be possible to develop methods that will aid the document examiner in his comparison of questioned and known documents. A part of these tools which is under investigation is the automated extraction of features from certain characters which can be used to describe a sample of writing. These tools are introduced in this paper