Fingerprint Vendor Technology Evaluation 2003: Summary of Results and Analysis Report

Published

June 30, 2004

Author(s)

Charles L. Wilson, Patrick J. Grother, Ross J. Micheals, S C. Otto, Craig I. Watson, R. A. Hicklin, H Korves, Brad Ulery, M Zoepfl

Abstract

The Fingerprint Vendor Technology Evaluation (FpVTE) 2003 was conducted to evaluate the accuracy of fingerprint matching, identification, and verification systems. The FpVTE is one of the tests that NIST has conducted in order to fulfill part of its PATRIOT Act mandate. Additional evaluations include the testing of the FBI IAFIS system, the US-VISIT IDENT system and SDKs (Software Development Kits) from several vendors. Eighteen different companies competed in FpVTE, and 34 systems were evaluated. Different subtests measured accuracy for various numbers and types of fingerprints, using operational fingerprint date from a variety of U.S.Government sources. The most accurate systems were found to have consistently very low error rates across a variety of data sets. The variables that had the clearest effect on system accuracy were the number of fingers used and fingerprint quality. An increased number of fingers resulted in higher accuracy: the accuracy of searches using four or more fingers was better than the accuracy of two-finger searches, which was better than the accuracy of single-finger searches. The test also shows that the most accurate fingerprint systems are more accurate than the most accurate facial recognition systems, even when comparing the performance of operational quality single fingerprint to good quality face images.

Citation

NIST Interagency/Internal Report (NISTIR) - 7123

Report Number

7123

NIST Pub Series

NIST Interagency/Internal Report (NISTIR)

Pub Type

NIST Pubs

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Keywords

fingerprint accuracy, fingerprint matching, number of fingers, vendor evaluation

Citation

Wilson, C. , Grother, P. , Micheals, R. , Otto, S. , Watson, C. , Hicklin, R. , Korves, H. , Ulery, B. and Zoepfl, M. (2004), Fingerprint Vendor Technology Evaluation 2003: Summary of Results and Analysis Report, NIST Interagency/Internal Report (NISTIR), National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=151592 (Accessed October 8, 2025)