Body Measurements for Digital Forensic Comparison of Individuals—An Overview of Current Developments

Forensic identification of individuals faces significant challenges, particularly when conventional biometric features such as the face are hidden. This paper examines the historical development and revival of body patterns (anthropometric rig) as biometric comparison feature, from historical Bertillonage to modern, computer-assisted methods such as digital anthropometric rig matching and the connection to 3D human pose estimation (HPE). It highlights both the mathematical and methodological foundations of this revival, as well as the potential and limitations of applying artificial intelligence (AI) in the context of digital anthropometric rig matching. The aim is to highlight the development of potential and challenges for the forensic validity of the person-specific digital skeleton. This clearly shows the time required for manual work, which underlines the need for automation. The time required can be reduced by approaches that use AI. However, these methods are often not yet up to the requirements in a forensic context.