CSIR designs new fingerprint technique

South African researchers have developed a new fingerprint classification and recognition technique, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) said.

"The structural fingerprint classifier... is able to correctly classify a fingerprint with only partial information," the CSIR said in a statement.

The researchers also introduced novel features to speed up the recognition of fingerprints.

"The technique is faster as it breaks down the overall database into smaller chunks to improve the performance of the fingerprint recognition system," the CSIR said.

Used by home affairs

In the old fingerprint recognition system, the templates usually sat in a database. When going through an identification process, thousands of templates had to be sifted through. This slowed down the process.

The new technique was already being used by home affairs.

"This is a major breakthrough that can contribute to the creation of much faster systems in the future," the CSIR said.

(Sapa, September 2011) 

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