IDEMIA Celebrates Strong NIST Performance of Contactless Biometric Scanner

IDEMIA is boasting about the strong performance of its MorphoWave fingerprint technology in recent NIST testing. The results of the Contactless-to-Contact Fingerprint Capture study were revealed back in May, but the NIST did not name the six contactless fingerprint solutions that were examined during the test.

Now IDEMIA is claiming that its MorphoWave scanner bested the other solutions in virtually every category, including matching rate, image capture sample rate, and minutiae similarity. The study itself was set up to compare contactless fingerprint solutions to more traditional contact-based alternatives, and to determine if those contactless options could be used with legacy fingerprint databases.

In that regard, the study showed that the accuracy of contactless fingerprint tech was comparable to contact-based tech when scanning multiple prints (the MorphoWave Compact scans four fingers in less than a second when a user waves their hand through the sensor). The contactless solutions also had extremely low rates of false positive matches. However, contact-based technology was more accurate when scanning a single print.

The study did show that contactless products like the MorphoWave could be used with existing databases. That interoperability is important because it means that organizations would not need to discard their old databases when deploying new technology. IDEMIA notes that contactless solutions have become far more popular since the onset of COVID-19, since a contactless scanner is more sanitary than a shared reader.

“We are delighted to see contactless fingerprint capture that is on the cusp of matching contact-based accuracy,” said IDEMIA CTO Jean-Christophe Fondeur. “Our MorphoWave Compact will seamlessly raise hygiene standards in a vast array of environments including corporate offices, stores, airports, theme parks and leisure and entertainment venues.”

Multiple new customers have adopted the MorphoWave Compact scanner in the past few months. The sensor is being installed at condominiums in São Paulo, and at the Digital Garage in Tokyo.

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June 25, 2020 – by Eric Weiss