Personal identification is emerging significant legal medicine, crime scenes and addionally in Genetic analysis. Dental surgeons play a serious role in disaster victim identification, age and gender identification, bite marks in sexual abuse cases or in cases of child abuse. The pattern of the lip prints of an individual are considered unique and are characteristic feature like fingerprints which do not change throughout the life. As crime perpetrators have slowly turned to using gloves to negate fingerprints found on the crime scene, lip prints are gaining importance as evidence and personal identification in police and legal matters.
Forensic dentistry plays a pivotal role in human identification, especially in scenarios where traditional methods are compromised. “Ident recognition,” or identification recognition, is the process of verifying an individual’s identity using various technologies. Ident recognition is extremely valuable for unrecognized individuals in cases of natural casualties, fatalities, unrecognized events, police prosecution, covering the accused party of suspicious crimes or missing suspects of murder. Usually, this personal identification is completed by comparing the anti-mortem record with the post-mortem record obtained from the crime scene. Fingerprints, crime scene photographs, bite marks, anthropometry, denture records and DNA analysis are some of the methods used by scientists and researchers for identification purposes.
Like fingerprints, the pattern of wrinkles on the lips has unique properties. Cheiloscopy is the study of the distinctive pattern known as lip prints, which is formed by the creases and grooves in the labial mucosa (called sulci labiorum).
The definition provided by R. Fischer in 1902 is “a method of identifying a person based on characteristic arrangements of lines appearing on the red part of lips or as a science dealing with lines appearing on the red part of lips.”
Cheiloscopy offers a non-invasive approach to personal identification. The uniqueness of lip prints, akin to fingerprints, positions them as a valuable tool in forensic investigations.
After becoming aware of the sophisticated crime detection procedures, perpetrators of crime now take adequate precautions such as wearing gloves. In these situations, identifying a perpetrator with precise techniques like fingerprint analysis does not yield a favorable result. As a result, investigators can use cheiloscopy and other adjuvant techniques as supporting evidence.
Cheiloscopy is a forensic procedure that seeks to classify humans based on lip traces or prints, and deals with the inspection of the pattern of grooves and furrows found on human lips. Lip prints represent lines & fissures which denote wrinkles and grooves present in the row of transition of human lip. Lip print is also a helpful method for detecting unknown persons, and serves as an supplement to the information being gathered.
Lip prints are collected from cutlery items after the consumption of any kind of beverages or prints obtained from fabric tissues or paper napkins which must have been used to wipe lips from the crime scenes. They have also been found from photographs, letters, windows and glass doors. These lip prints help to classify murderers and even rapists. Recording lip prints can be achieved by photographing the lips of the target on some flat surface that can be enlarged and traced for grooves. Some approaches may require applying a lipstick or other appropriate transmission medium to the lips, which is then pressed against a sheet of paper or cellophane film.
Studies have been undertaken to compare the pattern of these lip prints among monozygotic twins, and the findings obtained from these experiments have shown that they are not exactly identical. These variations in detail form a strong foundation that lip printing is completely new and compatible with various studies by Y.Tsuchihashi, Cottone J.A., and Standish S.M .
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