Time-Resolved Luminescence Imaging: Application To Latent Fingerprint Detection

5-methoxyninhydrin reacts with amino acids, forming a product which further reacts with TbC13•6H20. The resultant coordination compound displays ligand-rare earth intramolecular energy transfer via which long lived Tb3+ luminescene is obtained. The luminescence is effectively excited by argon-ion laser near-UV light, which can be modulated such that time-resolved imaging with a gazeable proximity-focused microchannel plate image intensifier can be utilized. This is applied to the detection of latent fingerprints located on strongly fluorescent surfaces.