Fingerprint technology beats world's toughest tests

Fingerprint technology beats world's toughest tests
Technology developed by the University of Warwick that can identify partial, distorted, scratched, smudged, or otherwise warped fingerprints in just a few seconds has just scored top marks in the world's two toughest technical fingerprint tests. The technology is also being rapidly taken up by the UK building trade who are delighted to have fingerprint technology which can cope with the often worn and ravaged builders' thumbprints.
Many other fingerprint techniques have tried to identify a few key features on a finger print and laboriously match them against a database of templates.

The University of Warwick researchers consider the entire detailed pattern of each print and transform the topological pattern into a standard co-ordinate system. This allows the researchers to "unwarp" any finger print that has been distorted by smudging, uneven pressure, or other distortion and create a clear digital representation of the fingerprint that can then be mapped on to an "image space" of all other finger prints held on a database. Instead of laboriously comparing a print against each entry in a database any new print scanned by the system is unwarped and over laid onto a virtual "image space" that includes all the fingerprints available to the database. It does not matter whether it's a thousand or a million fingerprints in the database the result comes back in seconds.

The technology has impressed more than just the construction industry. In the past week the technology has been examined by two of the world's most respected technical fingerprint benchmarking tests. Tests by the National Physical Laboratory ranked Warwick Warp's fingerprint Technology best overall for accuracy. A test of 36 finger print technologies by the US's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) ranked Warwick 3rd overall"

Read more at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091026093731.htm