Direct analysis of human hair before and after cosmetic modification using a recent data fusion method

Abstract

The cosmetic modification of hair is a very common procedure used to mask or cover evidence at a crime scene. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) tests are expensive and require good-quality collection of samples and a database profile. To overcome these challenges, direct analysis was performed on a large set of hair strands collected from individuals, denoted original samples, and the data were compared with those of the same samples after cosmetic modification performed by bleaching the samples in the laboratory. A total of 127 samples were evaluated in this study using two analytical techniques, wavelength-dispersive X-ray fluorescence (WDXRF) and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). Instead of testing many algorithms to develop classification models for the original and bleached samples, a recent method was applied that combines information from 17 classifiers. Data fusion was also evaluated to improve the accuracy of the classification model, which was higher than 99.2%, with no requirements to select eigenvectors or thresholds.