The fingerprint recognition technique is the dominant technology in the biometric market. There many factors that contribute for this success.
- High level of accuracy. It is proven that the fingerprint recognition technology may reach recognition rate near 100% in good quality images.
- Easy to use devices, the device used for capturing fingerprint image are intuitive and easy to use.
- Ability to enroll multiple fingers, if there some problem with one finger, the fingerprint technology still can be used with the other 9 fingers, sometimes using multiple finger improve the recognition.
- Range of deployments environments, It can be used in any place where biometric authentication or identification are needed.
The main limitations of the fingerprint technology are:
- Inability to enroll some users. About 2 % of the population have poor quality of fingerprint, especially the elder people and manual worker. For these cases one need to consider other biometrics or any other solution.
- Performance deterioration over time. Although the fingerprint is a stable physiological characteristic, it can suffer some small changes along the time and therefore it can affect the performance of the whole system. To overcome this problem, may be necessary to re-enroll the fingerprint and/or use multiple fingerprints enrollment.
- Association with forensic application. The fingerprint technology has been associate with forensic and this can cause discomfort to some people. Specially, in the countries where it is not habitual the use of fingerprint.
- Need to deploy specialized devices. The device needed for fingerprint capture is not yet present on desktops, at sales point, etc, as is the case of microphones and telephones used in voice recognition. The integration of fingerprint scanner within the keyboard will reduce this weakness.