ANKENY — High-tech tools are giving Iowa’s new crime lab a better look at fingerprints — even off a bag of airline peanuts.

One new tool is the Reflective Ultraviolet Imaging System, which uses a night vision scope and ultraviolet light to see fingerprints that were previously not visible. The machine cost $17,000.

“Three years ago we wouldn’t have been able to catch these prints,” said Gene Czarnecki, a criminalist at the new lab.

Another new machine, called DCS-3, uses high-tech technology to take a picture of fingerprints on difficult backgrounds, such as prints on personal checks with pictures or drawings in the background.

The new $49,000 machine takes a magnified picture of the check and manipulates the picture to get a better fingerprint, Czarnecki said.

“We are going to be able to remove repetitive patterns in the background,” he said. “This is some of the better usage of digital equipment. We are not tampering or doing anything to the print.”

Using the machine, investigators can even lift prints off peanut bags, such as those used on airplanes that often have complicated designs and numerous colors on them.

Once fingerprints are identified, Czarnecki can try to match them against a larger database than before.

In recent years, the FBI put fingerprints of 47 million people online. That database is easily searchable on a computer inside the crime lab.

Using the new system, Czarnecki identified a person who was mailing drugs from California to Iowa. He found a fingerprint on the tape used to put the address label on the box.