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- BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Ransom notes, like the one left behind
in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case, and other handwritten documents that
provide clues to criminal cases may soon be easier to analyze, thanks to
research being conducted by University at Buffalo computer scientists.
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- Researchers in UB's Center of Excellence
for Document Analysis and Recognition (CEDAR) have been awarded a $428,000,
16-month grant from the National Institute of Justice to develop computer-assisted
handwriting-analysis tools for forensic applications.
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- The new tools will for the first time
make available to law-enforcement investigators quantitative methods for
analyzing handwriting in an effort to identify writers of specific documents
-- who also may be suspects in criminal cases.
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- "Our first focus in this project
will be to establish on a scientific basis whether or not handwriting is
truly individual," said Sargur Srihari, Ph.D., SUNY Distinguished
Professor in the UB Department of Computer Science and Engineering and
director of CEDAR. "We will be asking 'is the handwriting of different
individuals truly distinct?'"
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- CEDAR is the largest research center
in the world devoted to developing new technologies that can recognize
and read handwriting. In the United States, it is the only center in a
university where researchers in artificial intelligence are applying pattern-recognition
techniques to the problem of reading handwriting.
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- Over the past more than 10 years, CEDAR
developed and refined software now used by the U.S. Postal Service to read
and interpret up to 80 percent of all handwritten addresses on envelopes.
CEDAR researchers today continue to refine and improve the software for
the USPS, as well as for Australia Post, which also has adopted the CEDAR
system.
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- That expertise attracted the attention
of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), which has been directed to
establish a scientific basis for handwriting testimony in court cases.
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- The NIJ project requires researchers
to look at handwriting from a different perspective than that required
by the postal service project.
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- "Previously we never were interested
in who the author was," said Srihari. "The main focus of our
Handwritten Address Interpretation system was always to say, 'What is common
or average about this handwritten address,' not 'What is special.' But
with this project, we will be asking, 'What is special about this?'"
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- Efforts to analyze handwriting in criminal
or civil cases have involved obtaining samples of writing from potential
suspects or witnesses and then comparing them with the writing in the document
in question.
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- In the JonBenet Ramsey case, for example,
potential suspects, including friends of the Ramseys, were made to write
some of the same words that appeared in the ransom note so that investigators
could compare them with the original document.
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- Many less-sensational cases involve forged
wills and other handwritten documents.
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- A 1993 Supreme Court decision stated
that in order for expert testimony to be admitted in court cases at any
level, a scientific basis for that expertise must be proven through research
and the peer-review process.
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- But because relatively few, if any, objective
criteria exist for analyzing handwriting, it has yet to be regarded with
the same confidence level as other kinds of evidence.
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- For instance, human analysts now need
to make elaborate measurements about such details of a person's writing
as how often a certain slant or loop occurs. The software under development
at UB will be able to estimate automatically the slant angle of someone's
script, as well as other features of an individual's writing. Those features
and quantitative data about them -- such as how often they occur and in
what context -- can then be compared with the writing in the document under
investigation.
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- "What we hope to do is to create
an automated system that could pick out handwriting styles and attach to
them some numbers and confidence levels for a specific document, to evaluate
how good a match there is between a sample and a given document,"
said Srihari.
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- Srihari and his colleagues at CEDAR are
analyzing handwritten addresses gathered from their postal research; they
also will be collecting individual handwriting samples from a cross-section
of the general population.
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- __________
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- Note: This story has been adapted from
a news release issued by University At Buffalo for journalists and other
members of the public. If you wish to quote from any part of this story,
please credit University At Buffalo as the original source. You may also
wish to include the following link in any citation: <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/05/990531072757.htmhttp://www.scien
cedaily.com/releases/1999/05/990531072757.htm
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