User's Manual

5
ⒸCopyright 2007Suprema Inc.
Basics of fingerprint recognition
n What is fingerprint recognition?
l Fingerprint is an individual’s own biometric information and does not change throughout his/her life.
Fingerprint recognition is a technology that verifies or identifies an individual using such fingerprint
information.
l Free from the risk of theft or loss, fingerprint recognition technology is being widely used in security
systems replacing PIN or cards.
n Process of fingerprint recognition
l Fingerprint consists of ridges and valleys. Ridge is a flow of protruding skin in a fingerprint while
valley is a hollow between two ridges. Each individual has different pattern of ridges and valleys
and finger recognition makes use of such originality and uniqueness of these patterns.
l Fingerprint sensor generates 2-dimentional fingerprint image using different technology. According
to the sensing technology, fingerprint sensors are classified into optical, capacitive, or thermal.
l Fingerprint template is a collection of numeric data representing the features of a fingerprint.
Fingerprint templates are saved inside the memory of BioStation and used for identification.
n Secure way to protect personal information
l To avoid privacy concern, Suprema’s fingerprint products do not save fingerprint images itself. It is
impossible to reconstruct a fingerprint image from a fingerprint template which is just numeric data
of the features of a fingerprint.