Palatal Rugoscopy - A guide for personal identification

Palatoscopy is a study of palatal rugae in order to establish a person’s identity. The fingerprint like uniqueness of rugae to each individual has already been accepted as a possible aid to personal identification. This may narrow the field of identification and gives results in conjugation with the other methods such as visual fingerprints and dental characteristics in forensic science. Thus the analysis of palatal rugae combined with other methods is an important alternative and complementary technique for human identification thereby providing a significant contribution in forensic investigations. The use of palatal rugae in forensic identification is preferred because of their low cost utilization simplicity and reliability.