Fast finger printing

Researchers at Warwick University have developed a new computer model that can recognise damaged, distorted and partial fingerprints in a few seconds, thus improving the accuracy of normal fingerprinting.

The fingerprints are collected using a touch pad scanner and the model is then able to reverse any warping, creating an original image of the print.

‘Every time you present the same biometric data the result is different,’ said Dr Li Wang, a researcher at the university’s department of computer science. ‘Variation in pressure, angle and light conditions all cause a difference. Those variations can cause problems in identifying prints so we are trying to minimise them.

‘We have a mathematical model which can track and collect the movement of each part of the data and then unwarp and align the fingerprint.’

The computer model can also use the tightly crowded sweat pores to improve accuracy, something distortion previously prevented.