Date:  July 1, 2009

As featured in Safe & Secure TV Channel Magazine, Vol. 1, No.1

If only fingerprinting those of us who need a background check was as fun as finger painting and not just an inky dril...press, press, roll. Repeat nine times. Wash, scrub and dry. Return to desk to find a message: "One finger didn't take. When can you return?" Grit teeth and grumble. Recent inkless routines are almost as cumbersome; you just don't stain your IZOD or you iPod.

Well, in the future you will be able to kiss those frustrations goodbye. Thanks to the Department of Homeland Security, digital fingerprinting is already in place for international travelers coming to the United States. The Department's U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) program uses biometrics, in this case fingerprints, to verify the identities of non-U.S. citizens entering the country. The current technology can capture up to four fingerprints at a time, making the biometric vertification process more accurate and efficient. However, it stil requires physical contact with a scanner.

Under a program managed by the Department's Science & Technology Directorate (S&T), the future of fingerprinting- new 3-D light technology- will be hands-off affair that's even quicker and -dare we say it- fun.

Cleanliness and entertainment value were not goals; they were just happy accidents. The need was speed and accuracy. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. government recognized the need for a better way to establish and verify identities of those who might try to do the country harm. Several years ago, the Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice (NIJ) sought advanced concepts under a program called Fast Rolled Fingerprint Capture. S&T and the University of Kentucky answered the call.

DIRECTION BY MACHINE

The goal; a machine to capture all 10 fingerprints in high resolution in less than 10 seconds, without a human operator . This next generatin technology ruled out procedures with inkpads or touch screens because they distort a finger's actual shape. The fingerprints of about one in 20 people (roughly 5% of the population) are too worn or damaged to be captured using contact ink-rolled fingerprinting, according to the University of Kentucky; and the ink-rolled technique takes five to ten minutes per person.

"What we wanted was great quality as efficiently as possible," says Michael A. Matthews, a program manager in S&T's infrastructure and Geophysical Division.

S&T awarded a grant to the University of Kentucky's Center for Visualization and Virtual Environments, which had refined a technique called structured light illumination, where a pattern of dots or stripes is projected onto a curved or irregular surface. By caculating how the pattern warps over a curve, scientists can calculate an object's exact shape- similar to how a flying bat uses sonar to distinguish foe from food- by comparing its readings from different angles.

This technology is not another finger scan. Using topological algorithms, software captures all of a finger's tiny ridges recorded from three cameras and combines them into a single three-dimensional image. The 3-D image is then "flattened" into a 2-D virtual fingerprint that's more precise than an ink-rolled print.

"We believe that these prints will eventually become the gold standard," says Professor Laurence Hassebrook, the University of Kentucky's principal investigator. Indeed, by capturing prints with depth information in 26 shades of gray, the structured-light fingerprinter will produce a higher quality of print. One of the benefits of this quality will be the ability to match prints with far greater accuracy.

If you were to watch the composite images as a rapid series of stills, you'd swear the stripes had physically moved across your skin. They would ripple and warp; darken and brighten; widen and narrow, while traversing the unique contoured ridges that make you unique. But it's all an illusion: The stripes never moved.

Can't a bad guy fool the system by tilting his finger? Nope: The software knows what a fingerprint should look like. Like Photoshop, it can automatically align the image.

COMPOSITE PATTERN

The University of Kentucky's system won't be beaming bars and stripes forever. A project goal is to project a single, continuous composite pattern, and use more cameras to capture an entire hand at once, complete with the equivalent of rolled fingerprints. Because of the enormous technical challenge of the technology remains a few years away.

There are many potential applications for this technology. The USA Patriot Act requires fingerprinting for all Hazardous materails Driver's Licenses, and many states are passing laws to require fingerprinting for everyone applying for a driver's license.

Sturctured light fingerprinting won't replace finge painting. But for accuracy and speed, it beats the old ways of fingerprinting, hands-down.

In the photo above, the 3D Finger and Palm Print Scannner is demonstrated