For the last 35 years, NIST has helped the Federal Bureau of Investigation improve the process of matching fingerprints found at crime scenes or collected from suspects with those on file. NIST developed automated systems that can correctly match up fingerprints by the minutiae or tiny details that investigators used to have to read by hand.

In cooperation with the American National Standards Institute, NIST also developed a uniform way for fingerprint identification data to be exchanged between different jurisdictions and between scanning machines made by different manufacturers.

View the fingerprint interactive, "Solving Crimes, Improving Security" (requires Flash Player).

The FBI has about 35 million fingerprints on file, most of which fall into one of five types, shown with their approximate percentages below. Check them out, then try and match crime scene prints with the prints of 10 suspects and see how you do!