Scanning fingerprint cards and identifying minutiae Comparing and matching lists of minutiae in Software

Generating Code 128 Code Set A in Software Scanning fingerprint cards and identifying minutiae Comparing and matching lists of minutiae

The contract to study automated matching of lists of minutiae was signed with the NBS with Wegstein as the principal investigator This contract led to the development of the M40 algorithm, the first matching algorithm used operationally at the FBI By 1969, the FBI became convinced that fingerprint matching could be automated to the extent that human technicians could be provided a manageably small list of candidates (or possible matches) for each fingerprint card searched against the repository Similar research was also occurring in France and the United Kingdom The FBI visited these research teams to share and to learn

The French and British researchers focused on automating the identification of latent fingerprints In Paris, the FBI visited Inspector Thiebault, who was experimenting with special purpose matcher boards driven by a computer Thiebault was also experimenting with Livescan technology rather than ink and paper for collecting fingerprints These experiments took advantage of frustrated

total internal reflection to capture ridge detail in the form of digital images The finger is placed on a glass (or plastic) platen and light is scanned across the platen from below Where a ridge is in contact with the platen, the light rays are frustrated from exiting the top of the platen and are scattered back into the platen and then onto the detector Where a valley is present, the light is reflected in a focused ray and a strong signal is detected Figure 3-2 from UltraScan Corporation demonstrates the process In the late 1970s, a public sector organization, SINORG,1 a subsidiary of the French State Financial Institution, Caisse des Depots et Consignation, received a contract to use fingerprints to enroll the voters of Senegal That effort was unsuccessful for two primary reasons: the immaturity of the technology and the lack of an infrastructure in Senegal Inspector Thiebault had a collaborator, Pierre Bodez, who continued his work and developed matching algorithms that he later sold to SINORG Researchers from the Ecole des Mines de Paris, a technical school in Paris, joined the team and advanced the technology Eventually, that group created a new company, Morpho Systemes, in 1982 Sagem Group purchased Morpho Systemes in March 1993 and it became Sagem Morpho SA Currently, Sagem Morpho is the world leader in civil AFIS technology sales as well as one of the top three players in the criminal AFIS business, along with NEC and Printrak Motorola Sagem s first North American installation was in Tacoma, Washington, in 1985, where they then moved their North American operations from Southern California When Sagem purchased Morpho Systemes, its fully owned subsidiary in the US, North American Morpho Systems (NAMSI), was renamed Sagem Morpho Inc

Behind the Iron Curtain, academic and industrial research in and development of AFIS technology was under way Several research groups in the USSR had developed the technology simultaneously and several tried to sell it to western businesses after 1989 For example, Identicator s fingerprint processing algorithms originally come from Russian researchers Identicator was one of the pioneers in the single finger and small-scale AFIS market Oscar Oz Pieper founded Identicator in California in 1991 BioLinkUSA in Florida has also benefitted from Russian research and development of algorithms and special matcher boards A Russian company and product called Papillon, along with Sonda, another company originating from the same research group, claim to have many small-scale installations in Russia Sonda Laboratory is located in the city of Miass in Chelyabinsk, Russia, and is supported by several Russian universities (See their web site wwwsondaru for more information) Sonda has been in busi-

Based on conversations (August 2002) and subsequent e-mail communications between Frederic Biarnes of Sagem Morpho and the author