The company now boasts that this means that the FBI has certified that these implementations meet the accuracy requirements in the Wavelet Scalar Quantization (WSQ) Gray-Scale Fingerprint Image Compression Specification, Version 3.1.

Neurotechnology is among the first companies to receive FBI certifications for Version 3.1 of the WSQ, which is the latest standard for exchange of fingerprint images within the biometrics and criminal justice community. According to the FBI, the certification programme is designed to facilitate interoperability between agencies and ensure efficient access to FBI criminal justice information services. Also WSQ certification is required by customers in many other countries and is included in various national-scale AFIS tender requirements. Neurotechnology has received a total of seven FBI WSQ certificates for different platform implementations, certifying that WSQ compression technology in Megamatcher and Verifinger SDKs meet FBI standards.

"Interoperability and biometric standards support is a critical requirement for large-scale biometric applications,” said Irmantas Naujikas, business development director for Neurotechnology. “At Neurotechnology we are continuously working in this area and WSQ 3.1 certification by the FBI acknowledges our efforts. Having a product certified for all major PC platforms is very big competitive advantage for our customers."

The WSQ Specification sets the standard for the exchange of 8-bit, 500ppi fingerprint images by defining a class of encoders and a decoder that is capable of decoding compressed image data from any compliant encoder. To obtain the certification, a WSQ encoder and decoder must meet specific parameters and implement the full range of functionality required by the WSQ Specification. Compliance is determined by comparing the tested implementation with output from a “double precision reference implementation” developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

In addition to the FBI WSQ Certification, the fingerprint algorithms in Verifinger and Megamatcher are NIST MINEX-compliant, making them suitable for use in US Government Personal Identity Verification program fingerprint recognition applications. Neurotechnology’s fingerprint algorithms have won numerous Fingerprint Verification Competition (FVC) awards since 2000 for their high accuracy and reliability.

Verifinger fingerprint identification technology is available as a software development kit (SDK) for the development of PC- and Web-based biometric solutions. More than 1500 end-user product brands in more than 100 countries have used the Verifinger algorithm over the past 12 years.

Megamatcher SDK incorporates the Verifinger fingerprint algorithm in a more powerful, multi-biometric SDK that is suitable for large-scale AFIS solutions. In addition to the fingerprint identification technology, MegaMatcher also incorporates Verilook (facial), Verieye (iris), Verispeak (voice identification) and palmprint technologies – any of which can be used singularly or in any combination for development of fast, highly reliable multi-biometric solutions. Both Verifinger and Megamatcher support Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OSX platforms.