ORI Forensic Tools for Quick Examination of Scientific Images and Plagiarism

These educational tools illustrate several principles in examining questioned images in biomedical science.

Plagiarism Tools: Various tools which help detect possible problems with plagiarism and citation.

Forensic Droplets: A "Droplet" is small desktop application in Adobe Photoshop® (v.7 and later) that automatically processes image files dragged onto its icon. A Droplet can be a nearly "seamless" interface for quickly examining certain features of a scientific image in Photoshop while reading the publication in the FULL TEXT (html) form in an Internet Browser. Download and save the Droplet to the desktop.

Forensic Actions: An "Action" is the sequence of steps in Photoshop that was recorded to create the Droplet, but unlike the latter it can be easily customized by the user. Download and save each action, and then import it through the Photoshop® Actions Palette, to create new routines that can be easily modified and shared.

Additional Forensic Actions, with advanced look-up tables for improved visualizations, that are compatible with Photoshop v CS2-3 are available by direct request to ORI (AskORI@hhs.gov).

Considerations, Sample Images, and Forensic Test-Patterns: This section discusses the methods, gives samples of images from past cases, and provides Forensic Image Test Patterns to evaluate the performance of the Droplet (or Action).