ROC Achieves Industry-Best Accuracy and Fastest Search Speeds in NIST ELFT Latent Fingerprint Testing, Advancing Forensic and Defense Missions

DENVER, Sept. 4, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- ROC, the only American-made multimodal biometrics and Vision AI provider, today announced industry-leading results in the latest NIST Evaluation of Latent Fingerprint Technologies (ELFT). ROC achieved the lowest Rank-5 error rate on FBI datasets, the second-lowest of any Western vendor on DoD benchmarks, and the fastest search speeds of any vendor tested.

In NIST ELFT testing, ROC completed searches in just 386 seconds across a database of more than 30 million fingerprint templates—roughly 20x faster than the average of Western peers. These results confirm ROC's position as the fastest-performing vendor in the benchmark while delivering forensic-grade precision in operationally relevant scenarios.

NIST ELFT: The Gold Standard for Latent Fingerprint Accuracy and Speed Testing
The NIST Evaluation of Latent Fingerprint Technologies (ELFT) is the leading benchmark for automated latent fingerprint recognition. It measures both accuracy and search speed using partial, low-quality impressions collected from operational probes. By testing algorithms against large reference databases, ELFT provides a transparent, standardized assessment of how systems perform under the same challenging conditions faced in real forensic work.

Rank-5 accuracy is a critical benchmark because it mirrors how latent fingerprint systems are used in practice. In operational scenarios, forensic examiners do not depend on a single top match; instead, they evaluate a shortlist of candidate identities returned by the system. A consistently low Rank-5 error rate means the correct identity appears within that shortlist, giving examiners the confidence to act quickly. This measure directly reflects how well a system supports law enforcement, defense, and intelligence agencies in turning difficult latent prints into actionable leads.

"This is just the beginning of what our next-generation latent fingerprint technology can do," said Dr. Brendan Klare, Chief Scientist and Co-Founder, ROC. "With each improvement, law enforcement and intelligence missions move closer to tools that expand search capacity, return better leads, and deliver faster results—all powered by American-built technology."

Driving the Next Era of Latent Fingerprint Search
Only two years in the making, ROC's highly efficient fingerprint algorithm is already demonstrating what a new generation of technology can achieve. Past hardware limits that forced agencies to search only subsets of fingerprints are no longer relevant.

As ROC's accuracy continues to improve, agencies are seeing expanded search capacity, faster responsiveness, and stronger operational outcomes in investigative workflows. Looking ahead, the company expects consistent progress: improvements in score normalization and automated watchlist matching (DET results) are planned, with another latent fingerprint algorithm release anticipated before year's end.

Read the full story on the ROC Blog:
ROC Surges Ahead in NIST ELFT Latent Fingerprint Benchmark

About NIST ELFT
The NIST Evaluation of Latent Fingerprint Technologies (ELFT) is a leading, open, one–to–many biometric evaluation run by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. It tests how well automated latent fingerprint systems perform, using challenging, partial, and unmarked images as probes against large reference databases. Importantly, ELFT compares "image–only" matching with systems that also leverage examiner–marked features, letting agencies see how much added value expert markups bring to accuracy. The test is widely regarded as the most rigorous benchmark for latent fingerprint matching, providing trusted and transparent performance evaluation across both accuracy and speed. 

About ROC
ROC is the only American-made multimodal biometrics and Vision AI provider, trusted by the U.S. military, law enforcement, and leading global FinTech brands. Their fully multimodal solutions leverage NIST-ranked face, fingerprint, and iris algorithms to enable fast, accurate, and secure identity verification for a range of applications including national ID, ABIS, tactical video analytics, digital payments, and more. For more information, visit www.roc.ai.

CONTACT
Matt Aitken, VP of Marketing
303-317-6118
[email protected] 

SOURCE ROC