Oct 2 : Researchers at the University of Warwick, England, have devised a means of identifying partial, distorted, scratched, smudged, or otherwise warped fingerprints in just a few seconds.

Previous fingerprinting techniques involved identifying a few key features on a fingerprint and laboriously matching them against a database of templates.

The new system, however, works by considering a detailed pattern of each print and transforming the topological pattern into a standard co-ordinate system.

This allows the researchers to ‘unwarp” any fingerprint 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 fingerprints held on a database.

Dr Li Wang, Chief Technology Officer at Warwick Warp, the company set up by the University to market the product, said, the unwarping is so effective, that for the first time, it has allowed comparison of the position of individual sweat pores on a fingerprint.

This was previously not possible, as the hundreds of pores on an individual finger are so densely packed, that the slightest distortion prevents analysts from using them to differentiate fingerprints.

According to Dr Wang, the “unwarping” of distorted, damaged or partial prints is not the only benefit of the new technology.

The system is also able to give almost instantaneous results.

Instead of laboriously comparing a print against each entry in a database, any new print scanned by the system is unwarped and overlaid onto a virtual “image space” that includes all the fingerprints available to the database, whether a thousand or a million, giving back the results only in a few seconds.

“Our technology also provides high speed and more importantly, our system’s accuracy and speed doesn’t degrade when the size of database increases,” said Dr. Wang.

So far, tests have proved 100 percent successful and the team is exploring a number of commercial opportunities for their new technology including commercial access control systems, financial transaction authorization systems and possibly even ID cards passports or border control systems.

“We tested our system on nearly 500 visitors from all over the world and achieved 100 percent accuracy. Many of the visitors were children and children’s fingerprints are particularly challenging as they generally contain finer features on a smaller area than adult fingers. Children often tend to twist their finger when placing the finger on the scanner, creating an elastic deformation, which provides a great testing ground for our technology,” Dr. Wang added. (ANI)

Home