Latent Testing Workshop 2006

The Latent Testing Workshop 2006 was held at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland on April 5th & 6th 2006. The report of the workshop is NISTIR 7377 "Summary of the NIST Latent Fingerprint Testing Workshop".

Background and Purpose

Searches of latent fingerprints against rolled impressions, against plain impressions (slaps or flats), or against latent fingerprints repositories are of rapidly increasing importance. Of particular value is the ability to do real-time screening against latent prints. It is projected that present processes and technologies will have difficulty in coping with the anticipated volumes. Accordingly, there is great interest in determining how the latent identification process can be expedited. Effective methods for obtaining system performance parameters such as reliability and search-speed/throughput are required to gauge progress.

The purpose of this workshop was to provide a joint Government-Industry forum for discussing topics which will lead to better understanding of testing of latent algorithms, latent search performance, and related areas. Specific topics include:

a) NIST’s proposed approach to latent testing

b) feedback from industry regarding whether the proposed testing approach would place limitations on their products

c) general suggestions for improving the testing methodology and augmenting the testing sets

d) determining the extent to which automation can be used to expedite human-based processing

e) determine whether fully automated feature extraction and matching is practical for some latents

f) “future direction” of latents and what steps should be taken now to prepare for this future.