NCJ Number
112645
Journal
FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin Volume: 56 Issue: 12 Dated: (December 1987) Pages: 14-16
Date Published
1987
Length
3 pages
Annotation
To facilitate information-sharing among law enforcement agencies, a new national standard for information system fingerprint identification data format has been developed.
Abstract
The standard, created by the National Bureau of Standards, is based on input from over 70 representatives of National and international law enforcement agencies, automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS) manufacturers, and others. Despite differences among systems, all AFIS' detect fingerprint minutiae (ridge endings and bifurcations) and record their relative position and orientation. The new standard provides a means to format such information to alleviate the problems caused by differing system requirements. The standard defines four types of record. The type-1 record is used in all information exchange transactions. It defines the type of transaction (e.g., enquiry, addition), contains information about other record types that may be included in the transaction, and contains fields for agency and subject identification and descriptive information. The type-2 record contains a small amount of descriptive information and a complete listing of feature information detected and recorded by the AFIS. The listing is in highly precise units so that the accuracy is not degraded by the conversion process. The type-3 record contains image data. The record can be used as direct input to the destination AFIS as though it were output data from that system's scanner so that the minutiae-based features can be detected directly from the data image record. The type-4 record is identical to the type-3 record, except resolution is increased from 10 to 20 pixels per millimeter.