Counterfeit fifty Ringgit Malaysian banknotes authentication using novel graph-based chemometrics method

Abstract

Counterfeiting, in particular, the forgery of banknotes is a serious crime problem and has become a great challenge to the global economies. The forensic science experts have been utilizing chemical technique such as infrared spectroscopy to analyze genuine and counterfeit banknotes. Nevertheless, chemometrics techniques are required to further discriminate the banknotes. In this paper, an advanced fuzzy graph chemometrics method is used to discriminate genuine and counterfeit fifty Ringgit Malaysian (RM50) banknotes. The development of the technique, namely chemometrics fuzzy autocatalytic set (c-FACS) is presented in this paper, together with the results and its comparison to principal component analysis (PCA) method. The results from the c-FACS analysis showed distinct patterns and features of the counterfeit banknotes in the c-FACS plot. Furthermore, the new method is faster than PCA in authentication analysis of counterfeit banknotes. Hence, the c-FACS provides better performance in terms of computing time as compared to PCA, and has the potential in assisting the investigation involving counterfeit banknotes.