The data for the development of the machine learning algorithm were generated using volunteers' fingermarks under full SHU ethical approval ER52762288.
Risk of disclosing participants'identities has been significantly mitigated as references to real names and other identifying information have been removed.
The fingerprint images were collected under an alphanumeric code. They were exported in JPEG format and shared with the AI team, already anonymised and contained no identifying information about the original donor. The only metadata included with the images was m/z values yielding the particular MALDI mass image of the fingerprint. The model was trained based on the grades assigned by West Yorkshire Police, which are the sole classification information included in the training dataset.