40 years of automated fingerprint identification for MorphoTrak

MorphoTrak announced it is celebrating its 40th anniversary as the pioneer developer of automated fingerprint identification systems.

The company’s fingerprint matching technology started off with Rockwell Autonetics, which in 1974 created the first-ever automated fingerprint components for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In the 1980s, Rockwell launched a fingerprint division called Rockwell Printrak, which was eventually acquired by Motorola in 2000.

Then in 2009, fingerprint system vendor Sagem Morpho, which was also part of Safran, rebranded itself as MorphoTrak.

“MorphoTrak has been at the forefront of fingerprint matching research and development since our roots in 1974,” said Celeste Thomasson, president and CEO of MorphoTrak. “We are proud to be part of a technology legacy that is such an integral part of law enforcement and public safety in the U.S. and around the world.”

AFIS technology has evolved considerably over the past 40 years to become faster and more accurate, as well as being able to search more data than previously. This can largely be attributed to its matching algorithms and system architecture.

Perhaps the most impressive innovation in AFIS in recent years is the ability to search all aspects of an individual’s hand through a process called “Major Case Prints”, which MorphoTrak provided for the FBI’s Next Generation Identification program.

The biometric technology is available on MorphoBIS which is used by many law enforcement agencies across the U.S.

As a result, law enforcement agencies submitting fingerprints to NGI now have an expanded searchable area of the hand that is far greater than the area covered in standard tenprint records.

This is particularly advantageous because most prints left at crime scenes are comprised of prints not covered by the standard tenprint record, which enables law enforcement agencies to solve more crimes using the NGI’s 120 million stored print records and capability to perform 10,000 latent searches per month.

As a subsidiary of Safran USA, MorphoTrak provides biometric and identity management solutions to a wide range of markets in the U.S. including law enforcement, border control, civil identification, and facility/IT security.

Headquartered near Washington D.C., with corporate facilities in Anaheim, California and Federal Way, Washington, MorphoTrak develops fingerprint identification systems, facial and iris recognition, as well as rapid DNA identification and secure credentials.

Article Topics

AFIS  |  MorphoTrak