At a microscopic level, a fingerprint is like a mountain range; so is its forensic biometric mark, which is made of oil accumulated in ridges that have depth and fine detail beyond what a standard 2D fingermark reveals – even if those ridges are only microns high.
Director of the Holography and Metamaterials Laboratory at the University of Dayton, believes that with only two dimensions to a fingerprint, too much is missing from the complete biometric picture. He describes a process for using digital holography to map and visualize fingermarks in 360-degree 3D.
