Source Device Attribution of Thermal Images Captured with Handheld IR Cameras

Source camera attribution of digital images has been a hot research topic in digital forensics literature. However, the thermal cameras and the radiometric data they generate stood as a nascent topic, as such devices are expensive and tailored for specific use-cases - not adapted by the masses. This has changed dramatically, with the low-cost, pluggable thermal-camera add-ons to smartphones and similar low-cost pocket-size thermal cameras introduced to consumers recently, which enabled the use of thermal imaging devices for the masses. In this paper, we are going to investigate the use of an established source device attribution method on radiometric data produced with a consumer-level, low-cost handheld thermal camera. The results we represent in this paper are promising and show that it is quite possible to attribute thermal images with their source camera.