Reconsideration of Bertillonage in the age of digitalisation: Digital anthropometric patterns as a promising method for establishing identity

The idea of using measurements of the human body for identity matching is deeply associated with Bertillonage, a historic biometric system that was briefly applied until it was superseded by fingerprinting in the early 20th century. The apparent failure then commonly causes doubt with regard to the suitability of a set of measurements as a biometric identifier in the present.

Hence, the aim of this paper is to explore the potentials of using an anthropometric pattern, comprising of a set of body measurements, for identity matching. For this purpose, it will begin with a thorough examination of Bertillon's system and move on to conduct a comprehensive inquiry of the current possibilities of using digital anthropometric patterns in image or video-based evidence.