One of the most difficult problems for signature and document analysis experts is knowing which part of a text or signature came before another. This question is often decisive in solving possible fraud and must frequently be explained in court without experts being able to come to a definite conclusion.
Between 26 and 27 September 2013 at the headquarters of the INTERPOL General Secretariat in Lyon, the Venzal forensic document laboratory from Palma, along with other experts from the document analysis departments of INTERPOL and the International Academy of Handwriting and Document Analysis Experts, unveiled the positive findings of a research project, which after more than two years of work has revealed the crossed line intersections in an important number of different inks.
To overcome one of the major obstacles, which is the multitude of different inks on the market and their composition, sixty forensic laboratories of the world's leading police forces and a series of internationally-renowned private laboratories have since 2010 been working on 2,880 cases, having analysed 57,600 different crossed line intersections.
The technology used for comparison studies involved state-of-the-art spectral analysis equipment, namely VSC 4000-6000, Projectina and LuminiSys TR, which allow signatures and handwriting to be analysed on a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum and factors such as visible and invisible post-signature or post-writing reactions to be detected.
Besides often being able to detect the order of crossed line intersection of two inks, there are objective elements that will soon reveal the date of a signature or handwritten text, and whether it corresponds with the date of the document.
Advances in multispectral analysis and scientific research significantly help in solving court cases and narrow in on the forgery and manipulation of signatures and documents.