Latent Fingerprints
Well, this is one of the very few times I have come across this term known as "Latent Fingerprints", after spending all these years in Biometrics. For the person who does not keep up with the Fingerprint Recognition every day like I do, you are probably wondering what is: "Latent fingerprints are often left behind on objects at the scene of acrime; Latent fingerprint images typically consist of fingerprint segmentsor portions of many different overlapping prints." (SOURCE: http://www.findbiometrics.com/press-release/5853)).So as one can see from this brief definition of it, Latent Fingerprints are very important to Crime Investigators as they collect evidence at a Crime Scene.
There is no doubt that there is a lot of evidence contained in Latent Fingerprints. But a prime disadvantage of them are that Forensics Examiners have to manually reconstruct the Fingerprint, and thus, this can greatly slow down the Crime Scene Investigation Process.
To help aid in this process, Biometrics/Security Vendors have come out with what is known as "Latent Fingerprint Matching Technology", and it works very similarly to the existing Biometric Technologies in terms of Verification and Identification. A key Biometrics/Security Vendor, known as "NEC Corporation", has just recently announced its Latent Fingerprint Algorithms and Technology have been currently ranked Number One via a Latent Fingerprint Test conducted by the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, also known as "NIST". The Latent Fingerprint Test is known as the "Evaluation of Latent Fingerprints Technologies", also known as "ELFT".
NEC Technologies far surpassed the other Biometrics/Security Vendors when compared to their respective Latent Fingerprint Matching Technologies. How was NEC Technologies able to receive such a high ranking to be placed in the Number One Status? Well, it was a combination of things, specifically, "NEC's highaccuracy rate is achieved by the integration of improved matchingtechnologies, such as a low-confidence minutiae adaptive matching algorithm,a zone matching algorithm, and recently developed image processingtechnologies specialized for latent fingerprints, such as a latentbackground noise removal algorithm and a low-quality fingerprint ridgerecognition algorithm." (SOURCE: http://www.findbiometrics.com/press-release/5853).
Final Thoughts On Today’s Posting
The ELFT Test utilized to examine the various Biometrics/Security Vendors’ Latent Fingerprint Matching Technology is pretty stringent. Apparently, 835 Latent Fingerprints are compared against the known and established Fingerprints of 10,000+ individuals in question. Also, the ELFT Test has garnered wordwide acclaim, and is currently being used across all of the major Law Enforcement Agencies of the United States Federal Government.
All of my Postings this far with regards to Fingerprint Recognition Technology have been dynamic-meaning, the End User is Verified and/or Identified on the spot, using the image and quality of that particular Fingerprint at that particular point in time for Physical Access Entry or Single Sign On Solution Applications. I definitely need to write more about Latent Fingerprint Technology.
I am by no means even close to being an expert in Forensics, but this Technology can be obviously of great support for Forensics Investigators, with the end result of being able to speed the process of Crime Scene Investigations.
Source for this Posting: http://www.findbiometrics.com/press-release/5853
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