Hoyos Labs Joins National Research Program to Inform Creation of Contactless Fingerprint Technologies for Federal Agencies

NEW YORK, Feb. 16, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Hoyos Labs, Inc., the global leader in biometric authentication, today announces a partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop new methodologies for measuring the image fidelity of contactless fingerprint capture devices, to support evaluation of these devices for future inclusion on the U.S. government's Certified Product Lists.

From local police stations to government agencies, today's law enforcement organizations utilize fingerprinting for a variety of screening and identification purposes. The most commonly used scanning devices digitally capture a fingerprint pressed on a glass surface with live-scan technology. 

However, the disadvantages to this process include added time – particularly when capturing rolled prints – as well as hygienic concerns. Law enforcement officials are now exploring contactless fingerprint readers as a more effective and efficient alternative.

Following up on earlier programs of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and National Institute of Justice (NIJ) to evaluate contactless fingerprint capture technology, NIST – under sponsorship of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Biometric Center of Excellence – initiated its Contactless Fingerprint Capture Device Measurement Research Program. The NIST program requires direct interaction with emerging technologies to address the following industry challenges: data format standards and best practices, development of methods for certification testing, as well as interoperability assessment with legacy contact-based devices.

Through a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with NIST, Hoyos Labs has offered up the company's touchless mobile biometric application, called 4F, for blind pilot testing. Hoyos Labs joins NIST's other CRADA partners, including 3M Company and MorphoTrack, in contributing its touchless fingerprint acquisition technology to ensure the performance metrics emerging from the collaboration will be suitable for a broad range of devices.

"Our participation in NIST's research program is mutually beneficial," said Hector Hoyos, founder and CEO of Hoyos Labs. "Not only are we playing a critical role in building a worldwide standard for testing contactless fingerprint scanners, but NIST researchers are also providing us with new scenarios that we have been previously unable to test using human subjects – to help us better understand any limitations to our product and make the necessary improvements."  

Hoyos Labs' 4F identification technology simultaneously captures all four fingerprints by leveraging high-resolution camera capability and flash lighting mode on modern smartphones. Hoyos Labs conducted tests in accordance with the FBI's 2D image quality standards, which demonstrated 4F is capable of producing images that exhibit outstanding geometric fidelity, sharpness, detail rendition and grayscale dynamic range with low noise characteristics.

4F eliminates many of the distorting variables present with today's hardware scanners, such as elastic deformation when pressing a finger on the scanner surface, and delivers a biometric template that is a precise copy of the captured finger impression. For the protection sector, in particular, 4F presents law enforcement agents with the opportunity to cross-reference an individual's fingerprints against existing federal databases and confirm a person's identity within minutes.

Under the CRADA, results of the program's tests will be shared with Hoyos Labs scientists to be considered in future 4F technology research and development.

For more information on Hoyos Labs and its portfolio of biometric authentication solutions, please visit: http://www.hoyoslabs.com/.

About Hoyos Labs
Hoyos Labs is the leading biometrics-based end-to-end authentication infrastructure company, and the only company that can guarantee identity. The goal of Hoyos Labs is to develop and deploy enterprise and consumer identity assertion technology platforms that will conveniently and securely address the identity assertion and authentication challenges we face today. Hoyos Labs currently has offices in New York, Boston, San Juan (Puerto Rico), Oxford (United Kingdom), Bucharest (Romania), Timisoara (Romania) and Beijing (China).

SOURCE Hoyos Labs

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