3D Scanning Brings the Future of Fingerprinting

A new touchless fingerprinting system is faster and more
accurate than rolling your fingertips on an ink pad.

Fingerprinting with ink or even sensor plates poses a chore
for everyone involved, except possibly 10-year-old kids. But
that could change with a 3-D system that projects light
patterns onto a finger and analyzes the image within a second.

The method works by beaming a series of striped lines so that
they wrap around a finger. A 1.4 megapixel camera captures
the lines at almost 1,000 pixels per inch, and creates
a highly detailed 3-D map of the fingerprint ridges and
valleys.

The new device has proved both more efficient and accurate
than traditional 2D fingerprinting. Ink fingerprinting has
always been a painstaking and none-too-accurate process.
Even modern scanners with glass plates often require several
tries, and can take several minutes to capture prints from
all 10 fingers.

This effort by University of Kentucky researchers represents
one of several government-funded efforts to develop 3D
fingerprinting technology. The team hopes to eventually
reducing processing time to less than 0.1 seconds, and scan
all 10 fingers at all once -- a likely boon for both customs
agents and the FBI in the near future.

Such fingerprinting won't necessarily help forensics teams in
the field, even if law enforcement databases improve based
on the new technology. But there's always more CSI-style
methods waiting to lift fingerprints left behind by perps.