Idemia emphasizes speed advantage in latest NIST ELFT fingerprint evaluation

Idemia Public Security has highlighted the results of its National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Evaluation of Latent Fingerprint Technologies (ELFT), which measures the performance of latent fingerprint identification systems used in forensic investigations.

The results illustrate how competition in latent fingerprint matching is increasingly focused on processing speed and scalability as top-performing systems converge on similarly high levels of accuracy.

The French security giant ranked first in average search duration, reporting a search time of approximately two minutes. The next-fastest algorithm took six minutes to complete the search. Idemia said its idemia+0008 algorithm achieved a Rank-1 Hit Rate of 96.1 percent in the evaluation.

The company argues that speed is especially important as law enforcement agencies face increasing pressure on computing resources. Idemia says it achieved faster conversion of latent traces into actionable investigative leads, higher automation and throughput for latent evidence processing, and reliable performance at a national scale.

“We know from our customers that in their investigative environments, speed and reliability are of the essence,” says Vincent Bouatou, Idemia’s chief technology officer. “These results demonstrate our ability to significantly accelerate latent fingerprint identification while maintaining the high levels of accuracy and operational trust our customers expect.”

NIST has also published ELFT evaluations for NEC (report) and Neurotechnology (report), following March 2026 submissions. The results highlight the increasingly competitive field of latent fingerprint identification, with vendors competing not only on matching accuracy but also on operational factors such as search speed, throughput and scalability.

Earlier this year, NIST published ELFT results for Innovatrics and ROC. ROC reported a Rank-1 Hit Rate of 98.2 percent for its January 2026 submission, while Innovatrics reported 98.6 percent.

With multiple vendors posting strong matching performance, operational factors such as search speed, throughput and scalability are becoming increasingly important differentiators for law enforcement agencies deploying large-scale forensic systems.

Article Topics

accuracy  |  biometric testing  |  biometrics  |  ELFT  |  fingerprint biometrics  |  Idemia Public Security  |  NIST