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Firearms and Toolmarks

A Study in Reproducibility: The Congruent Matching Cells Algorithm and cmcR Package

Scientific research is driven by our ability to use methods, procedures, and materials from previous studies and further research by adding to it. As the need for computationally-intensive methods to
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CSAFE Project Update & ASCLD FRC Collaboration

This presentation highlighted CSAFE’s collaboration with the ASCLD FRC Collaboration Hub.
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Judging Firearms Evidence

Firearms violence results in hundreds of thousands of criminal investigations each year. To try to identify a culprit, firearms examiners seek to link fired shell casings or bullets from crime
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Blind Testing and Blind Verification in Firearms

This workshop provides a summary of the Houston Forensic Science Center’s blind quality control program, focusing on blind quality control and blind verification in the Firearms section. The presenters will
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An Open-Source Implementation of the CMPS Algorithm for Assessing Similarity of Bullets

In this paper, we introduce the R package cmpsR, an open-source implementation of the Congruent Matching Profile Segments (CMPS) method developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
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A Pipeline for Cartridge Case Comparisons

We introduce novel sub-procedures in the pre-processing, comparison and similarity feature steps. The sub-procedures result in an improved error rate compared to our implementation of the CMC method while also
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Affect of Manufacturer Finishing Methods on Subclass Characteristics Production on Breech Faces

The following is a presentation given at Association for Firearms and Toolmarks (AFTE) (2022).
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An Algorithm for Forensic Toolmark Comparisons

Forensic handheld toolmark examiners currently compare toolmarks (e.g. scratch marks on wire found as part of an explosive device, or on a door frame after someone broke into a house)
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Exploration of Subclass Characteristics Manufacturing

A webinar presented during the Forensic Technology Center of Excellence (FTCoE0 Firearm and Toolmark webinar series on the progress of our CSAFE project. This study assesses the production of subclass
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Surveying Practicing Firearm Examiners

A sample (n = 79) of practicing firearm and toolmark examiners was queried about casework as well as their views about the potential role that statistics might play in future
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