Fingerprint technology beats world's toughest tests

London, Oct 27 : A technology that can identify partial, distorted, scratched, smudged or warped fingerprints in just a few seconds has scored top marks in the world's two toughest technical fingerprint tests.

The novel technology, developed by the University of Warwick (UW), can cope with the often worn and ravaged builders' thumbprints.

UW researchers consider the entire detailed pattern of each print and transform the topological pattern into a standard coordinate 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 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 overlaid 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.

This technology has now been snapped up by Data Collection Strategies (DCS) for the construction industry that has just deployed it for security and staff management on six building sites.

Rodney Holland, managing director, DCS, said: "This is the first time I have seen a biometrics system that works reliably with the type of poor quality fingerprints we see routinely in the construction industry."

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, said an UW release.

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' National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) ranked Warwick third overall.