AccuScan™

FBI-Certified scanning and digitization of fingerprint cards

AccuScan is an add-on module for NISTPack that together with any of several market-leading consumer-grade flatbed scanners enables an FBI-certified solution to scan and digitize paper tenprint cards. The FBI requires compliance with its EFTS IQS (Electronic Fingerprint Transmission Specification – Image Quality Specification) for fingerprint card scanning solutions.

Related products include AccuScanMB for high-volume, automated batch processing of fingerprint cards and FormScanner, an application that can be used to assist and administer the card scanning process.

Together, NISTPack and AccuScan provide a fully programmable and configurable software tool that enable systems integrators to design and deploy a tenprint card scanning system that is fully FBI compliant.

The combined NISTPack/AccuScan software toolset provide the following:

  • FBI IQS Appendix F compliance for a scanner
  • FBI certified WSQ compression and decompression
  • Fingerprint image quality measurement and Q/A
  • Read, write, view, edit FBI EFTS civil applicant and criminal tenprint transactions
  • Validate and error-check FBI EFTS submission files (electronic tenprint cards) and FBI responses (ident, no-ident, or error)

The figure below shows the user interface of the AccuScan reference application. The individual fingerprint images have been cut out of the larger scanned image, compressed with WSQ and inserted into the EFTS file as separate Type-4 records. The source code to this program is provided as part of the AccuScan development kit.

AccuScan screen

Applications

Features and Functionality

Card Template Tool

All U.S. state and federal government agencies maintain and utilize a unique set of fingerprint cards and forms. Some states have five or six different cards, and each card is used for a different purpose, depending upon the reason for obtaining the inked prints.

AccuScan manages this problem through an XML-based configuration file that holds the layout details of the original paper document. This file describes the size and location of each fingerprint or palm print image. AccuScan includes a utility (executable and source) that enables the easy creation of these XML configuration files. The process includes scanning of a blank or populated original card, loading it into the Template Tool, and then tracing the fingerprint image boxes. After all image regions of interest have been selected, the file is saved and can be used by an AccuScan runtime application.

Also see Aware’s FormScanner applications for fingerprint card and form scanning.

AccuScanMB for High-Volume, Automated Batch Processing of Fingerprint Cards

AccuScanMB is an enhanced version of AccuScan designed to enable “multi-batch” fingerprint card scanning though a parallel configuration of up to six off-the-shelf flatbed scanners equipped with automatic document feeders (ADF). Each scanner can process up to 160 500 ppi cards per hour or 48 1000 ppi cards per hour. With six scanners running in parallel, nearly 1000 500-ppi cards can be processed every hour. Like AccuScan, AccuScanMB provides Appendix F-certified scanning at 500 and 1000 ppi, and maintains AccuScan’s configuration, cropping functionality, and API.