Development, Validation, and Implementation of CMC Algorithm into a Software Platform for Firearm Analysis

The research involves implementation of a comparison algorithm for firearm forensics. The Congruent Matching Cells (CMC) algorithm has been developed by NIST yet does not appear in any commercially available software. As requested in the call for proposals, we will implement the algorithm in the C++ programming language and validate CMC using two specified datasets. In addition, we will incorporate the CMC method into our already commercially available software for firearm analysis. Our software implements import, visualization, masking, database, and search functionality. In addition to the two specified datasets we will also evaluate CMC against two additional, larger, real-world datasets. We will also explore slight algorithm variants whereby CMC algorithm parameters can be adjusted (e.g., number/size of grid cells and the CCF, angle, and translation thresholds). Overall, we will advance the CMC method with real-world testing and will incorporate CMC into a fully functional software application ready for deployment to crime labs.