Researchers have discovered that not all fingerprints are unique and different

Fingerprints from different fingers of the same person are extremely similar (Getty)

Engineers at the US universities of Columbia and Buffalo have created a new fingerprint analysis using artificial intelligence (AI) that overturns the long-held belief in forensics that no two fingerprints are the same, even on different fingers of the same one. person. .

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The discovery, reported this Wednesday in the journal Science Advance, demonstrated, with 99.99% confidence, that fingerprints from any two fingers of the same person are much more similar than previously thought.

Fingerprints are essential in crime labs to solve cases and in billions of mobile phones around the world for digital authentication, although, for now, all technologies in this field are designed on the assumption that no two fingerprints exist identical digital.

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To date, fingerprints are not useful in situations where the available prints are from fingers other than those registered, such as at a crime scene.

However, a study promoted by Columbia engineering student Gabe Guo, together with other researchers from the same university and the University at Buffalo, has shown that it is possible to overcome this limitation by analyzing characteristics of fingerprints that had not been studied until now . Now. .

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Guo and his colleagues found a public U.S. government database with about 60,000 fingerprints and entered them in pairs into an AI-based system known as a deep contrast network.

Sometimes the pairs belonged to the same person (but with different fingers) and sometimes to different people.

The researcher also points out that his discovery could improve the convenience and accessibility of digital authentication techniques (REUTERS/Edgard Garrido/File Photo)

The engineers, without any forensic knowledge, extracted fingerprint representation vectors from 525,000 images using deep neural networks and made a surprising discovery: fingerprints from different fingers of the same person are extremely similar.

They found that the orientation of the ridges (the most prominent area of ​​the print) near the center of the prints explains much of this similarity, and that this pattern holds for all pairs of fingers from the same person.

The model has been successfully tested with women of different gender and racial groups.

“We hope this additional information can help prioritize leads when there are many possibilities, exonerate innocent suspects, or even create new leads for cold cases,” Guo said in a statement from Columbia University.

The researcher also points out that his discovery could improve the convenience and accessibility of digital authentication techniques.

(With information from EFE)

2024-01-10 22:36:00
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