Idemia PS hails progress of fingerprint biometrics at scale in latest NIST result

Matching speeds for fingerprint biometrics have improved by multiple orders of magnitude since the last time the U.S. National Institute and Standards of Technology evaluated Idemia Public Security’s fingerprint biometrics technology from for identifying people from large databases.

The company is celebrating its results in the Friction Ride Image and Features Technology Evaluation – Exemplar One-to-Many. FRIF TE 1EN evaluates algorithms for operational environments like national police AFIS, border checks, and criminal or civil enrollment. It  was relaunched by NIST in September, after a 13-year hiatus.

Compared to the previous version, the Fingerprint Vendor Technology Evaluation (FpVTE) 2012, Idemia PS says its latest results show its biometric accuracy has improved by between five and ten times.

Idemia PS scored a false non-identification rate (FNIR) of 0.0003 at a false positive identification rate (FPIR) of 0.001 or lower in matches against the 1.6 million images in Class A left and right index prints in the evaluation, and a Rank-1 FNIR of 0.0002.  In Class B Idemia PS’s algorithm has an FNIR of 0.0014 for left slap, 0.0007 for right slap, 0.0002 for left and right slap and 0.0002 for identification flats at FPIR 0.001, and Rank-1 FNIR of 0.0002, 0.0004, 0.0001 and 0.0005, respectively. In Class C the same algorithm scored FNIRs of 0.0001 across the board and Rank-1 FNIRs of 0.0025, 0.0038 and 0.0029 for ten fingers plain-plain, plain-rolled and rolled-rolled.

“Idemia Public Security’s performance reflects the focus we place on building fast, reliable, and independently proven biometric solutions,” says Idemia Public Security CTO Vincent Bouatou in the company announcement. “We are immensely proud of these results that confirm that our fingerprint identification technology provides the accuracy and speed agencies need to protect communities, secure borders, and deliver trusted identity services.”

Parent company Advent is reportedly considering putting Idemia Public Security, which owns IP on the biometric algorithms, up for sale with a €3 billion asking price. The company’s Travel and Transport division just rebranded its product portfolio to reflect the evolving requirements of governments and the travel industry.

Article Topics

biometric identification  |  biometric matching  |  biometrics  |  fingerprint biometrics  |  Friction Ridge Image and Features (FRIF)  |  Idemia Public Security