title: Reconstruction of ripped-up documents using fragment stack analysis procedures.
abstract: Reconstruction of ripped-up documents can be a very time-consuming task for forensic experts. Currently, this task is often carried out using various homespun or loosely defined procedures. Under the main assumption that a (partially) ordered set of fragments can be recovered, we propose and discuss a more formal analysis methodology for this type of reconstruction problem. We discuss several complications that can occur in real-life problems and illustrate the efficiency of the proposed methods. Although several avenues for further research remain, we show that the proposed approach offers both a better understanding of the problem, as well as important strategies for devising very fast manual and semi-automatic fragment reassembly procedures.
authors.affiliation: Nationaal Instituut voor Criminalistiek en Criminologie(NICC/INCC), Vilvoordsesteenweg 100, B-1120 Brussel, Belgium. Patrick.DeSmet@just.fgov.be
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: De Smet