Are our hands as unique as our fingerprints? If so, can that be proven beyond a reasonable doubt? A new program led by forensic anthropologist Dame Sue Black is asking 5,000 citizen scientists to help answer that question by uploading photos of their hands.
Black and her team within the H-Unique program at Lancaster University need anonymous photographs of the hands of 5,000 people over the age of 18 from all ethnicities, nationalities and backgrounds. The images will be marked up by experts looking for anatomical differences caused by development, genetics, aging, the environment and even accidents. The researchers will compare hands to see if our hands are truly unique.
“We know that features such as vein patterns, skin creases, freckles, moles and scars are different between our right and left hands, and even different between identical twins,” Black said, “But we need to know if our hands are genuinely unique.”
If they are, the next step will be to train computers to extract anatomical features from photographs. This will allow algorithms to be designed that can help police link suspects to crimes just from images of their hands.
The system could have a drastic effect on child sexual abuse perpetrators. In videos and images shared online of child sex abuse, often the only visible part of the abuser is the back of his/her hands. A unique identification system could go a long way toward reducing this type of crime. In fact, Black as already used her techniques in criminal prosecutions, which has led many accused of child sexual abuse to plead guilty when faced with hand identification evidence.
Training the computers requires a large number of photographs, so the research team set up a web-based app to make it easy for people to contribute their images to the project. Interested parties can use the web browser on their smart phones to visit h-unique.lancaster.ac.uk. The app provides clear instructions on how to take images from the angles the researchers need—a process that takes about 10 minutes to complete. The images will not be shared with any external agencies and will be destroyed at the end of the research project.
“We are looking to deliver a step-change in the science so we can analyze and understand all the factors that make a hand unique,” Black said. “This knowledge can be used to develop sophisticated computer algorithms and new forensic tools that will help law enforcement apprehend those who harm the most vulnerable in our society.”
While forensic podiatry is a recognized subdiscipline of forensic science, hand identification has not received the same attention. It has been used in the UK to an extent as part of Black’s work, but it’s been minimal. Whether hand identification will eventually be recognized as a legitimate science in U.S. courts remains to be seen, but it does bring intriguing possibilities to the forefront. At minimum, perhaps hand identification photos can be used to establish perpetrator locations, the same as witness statements or grainy CCV footage.
“The tools we develop will reliably and robustly inform decisions in criminal courts,” said Bryan Williams, lead researcher at H-Unique and professor of biometrics and human identification at Lancaster University. “They could also be used to assist law enforcement agencies to rapidly and autonomously analyze hours of footage and thousands of offensive images.”
Photo: A hand marked up for identifying features. Credit: Lancaster University