Fingerprint Scan of The Dead: Real-Time Identification During Search and Recovery Phase in Large Scale Disaster

Fingerprint analysis have been the gold standard for personal identification and a most reliable means of primary identification in Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) work. However, finger printing of the dead has always been primarily performed in the mortuary during postmortem (PM) examination. This identifier maybe lost due to the transportation and body handling where the duration of the recovery of dead bodies could exceed 48 hours and the bodies have already started to decompose. The objective of the study is to demonstrate the possibility of using a portable biometric reader to capture and to match with a cadaveric fingerprint scanin order to translate into real-time identification in a large scale disaster. The authors used an optical fingerprint biometric reader MSO 1350 and a smartphone to conduct this study. An initial pilot study of 18 subjects and a total of 100 known deceased were used to match ownthumbprintswith theirMalaysian Identity Card (MyKad).Descriptively, 86.9% of the cadaveric finger prints were matched. Inferential statistical analysis was performed using IBM SPSS Version 26.0. The analysis of the data proved that the fingerprint biometric reader device and its application which has been used for the living can also be used for the dead.