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New depth to fingerprint scanning

Improve the reliability of fingerprint biometrics by scanning under the skin.

The manufacturing and industrial industries face many of the same security challenges that other industries face. However, some of these concerns are potentially more important to these environments given the value of the goods and machinery that may be involved.

Unauthorised access of staff is one of these critical concerns. Without knowing exactly who is in the plant at any given time, companies remain vulnerable to machinery sabotage, theft and process compromises. Implementing a biometric access control solution addresses the immediate problem of authenticating staff, but traditional biometric devices often struggle to read the fingerprint accurately due to the wear and tear inflicted on hands by manual labour.

The accuracy and reliability of any fingerprint biometric is dependent on the image quality of the print itself. Poor images lead to misleading results. Lumidigm’s patented multispectral imaging (MSI) system uses multiple wavelengths of light to capture an image of both a person’s external fingerprint and their identical internal fingerprint providing another dimension to the scan.

“The internal fingerprint lies about 2 millimetres under the surface of the skin,” explains Dave Crawshay-Hall, CTO of Brand New Technologies, local distributor for Lumidigm. “It is made up of tiny blood vessels called capillaries and the pattern is identical to the surface print. Even if the external print is damaged, MSI uses the internal print data to ensure clean, clear images of anyone in any environment.”

The Lumidigm Venus series MSI sensors capture high quality images even when the fingerprint ridges are hard to distinguish due to genetics, age, dirt, finger placement or environmental factors. Using the Lumidigm sensors, factories can confidently verify all their staff, including those with problem fingerprints that tend to thwart traditional biometric sensors.

“What makes the MSI sensors so suitable for the manufacturing and industrial industries is its robustness and reliability. It is also easily integrated into existing systems, requires minimal maintenance and enables high throughput of staff. Companies can depend on the Venus series to return superior images on anyone, any time, in any environment,” concludes Crawshay-Hall.

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