The Uniqueness of Facsimile Documents Caused by Changes in Character Pixelation

The primary objective of this research was to test the hypothesis that every page transmitted individually by a fax machine will be unique due to changes in character pixelation. The secondary objective of the research was to test the hypothesis that the character pixelation changes can be accurately reproduced on a 1st-generation photocopy. The tertiary objective was to test the hypothesis that every page transmitted by the fax broadcast function will bear similar changes in character pixelation due to those documents sharing the same single-scanning process of the sending fax machine.
The test documents were transmitted from 1 fax machine to individual fax machines located locally, interstate, and internationally. These documents were then returned, and microscopic comparisons were made of corresponding characters appearing on the respective documents. The results of this research demonstrate that each page transmitted individually by fax creates a unique pixelation pattern for each character and that this pattern was accurately reproduced on 1st-generation photocopies of these respective test fax pages.
The research demonstrates that changes in character pixelation can assist document examiners to trace the source of a photocopy of a 1st-generation fax document back to the original received facsimile from which that copy(s) was produced.