Forensics, from the Latin forensic (belonging to the forum / market), is a collective term for scientific and technical fields in which criminal activities are systematically investigated. The history of the term originates from Roman times, during which a criminal charge meant presenting the case before a group of public individuals in the forum and defending it with facts and arguments. This origin is the source of the two modern usages of the word forensic – as a form of legal evidence and as a category of public presentation. In modern forensic science, scanning systems are used in particular to uncover forgeries of documents, certificates and works of art. This can be done primarily by using multispectral photography. It allows the non-invasive material analysis of handwriting, print and machine fonts, paper structures, color pigments, painting and drawing materials such as inks or chalks as well as the visualization of watermarks and signatures.
