Extraction and Selection of Geometric Moment Features for Forensic Ballistic Specimen Identification

Abstract

This paper introduces a recognition system for firearms identification based on cartridge case image. When a gun is fired, a unique characteristic on the cartridge and projectile of a bullet are produced. There are more than 30 marks left on the surface of a fired bullet which are invaluable towards identifying the firearm used. These characteristics are known as the mechanical fingerprint of firearm. Therefore, this research has extracted forty eight significantly different features of geometric moment from cartridge case images. Then correlation analysis was used to select the vital and relevant features for classification using discriminant analysis. Keywords: Firearms; cartridge case; geometric moment features; correlation analysis; discriminant analysis