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Introduction
Fingerprint identification is one of the most well-known and publicized biometrics. Because of their uniqueness and consistency over time, fingerprints have been used for identification for over a century, more recently becoming automated (i.e. a biometric) due to advancements in computing capabilities. Fingerprint identification is popular because of the inherent ease in acquisition, the numerous sources (ten fingers) available for collection, and their established use and collections by law enforcement and immigration.

History
The practice of using fingerprints as a method of identifying individuals has been in use since the late nineteenth century when Sir Francis Galton defined some of the points or characteristics from which fingerprints can be identified. These “Galton Points” are the foundation for the science of fingerprint identification, which has expanded and transitioned over the past century. Fingerprint identification began its transition to automation in the late 1960s along with the emergence of computing technologies. With the advent of computers, a subset of the Galton Points, referred to as minutiae, has been utilized to develop automated fingerprint technology.

In 1969, there was a major push from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to develop a system to automate its fingerprint identification process, which had quickly become overwhelming and required many man-hours for the manual process. The FBI contracted the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), now the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), to study the process of automating fingerprint classification, searching, and matching. NIST identified two key challenges: 1 scanning fingerprint cards and extracting minutiae from each fingerprint and 2 searching, comparing, and matching lists of minutiae against large repositories of fingerprints.

In 1975, the FBI funded the development of fingerprint scanners for automated classifiers and minutiae extraction technology, which led to the development of a prototype reader. This early reader used capacitive techniques to collect the fingerprint minutiae (See Hardware section). At that time, only the

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