Firearm classification based on numerical features of the firing pin impression

• Published in: Procedia Computer Science
• Main Author: Liong C.-Y.; Md Ghani N.A.; Kamaruddin S.B.A.; Jemain A.A.
• Format: Conference paper
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V. 2012
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84897992185&doi=10.1016%2fj.procs.2012.09.123&partnerID=40&md5=44d6631c87f3501148814adcb6982c1e

Many heavy crimes committed such as murders or robberies frequently involve firearms, particularly pistols. In order to solve the crime cases, firearm identification is becoming vital. Unique marks are left on the bullet and the cartridge case when a firearm is fired. The firing pin impression is one of the most vital marks on any cartridge case. In this study, a total of 68 features of firing pin impression images - 20 basic statistical features, and 48 geometric moment features up to the sixth order - were extracted from three regions of the firing pin impression image, namely whole, centre and ring images. Five different types of pistol of the Parabellum Vector SPI 9 mm model were tested, where 50 bullets were fired from each pistol. Preliminary analysis using Pearson correlation shows that the features are significantly highly correlated. Therefore principal component analysis (PCA) was used to analyze the interrelationship among the features and combine them into a smaller set of factors while maintaining maximum information of the original patterns. PCA has reduced the dimensionality of the features into nine significant components of features. Discriminant analysis was used to identify the types of pistols used based on the new components. A total of 85.2% of the images were correctly classified according to the pistols used using cross-validation under discriminant analysis. The result demonstrates the potential of using PCA to reduce the dimensions of the numerical features towards an efficient firearm identification system. © 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V.