Innovatrics Tops NIST ELFT benchmark

Innovatrics’ latest submission to the NIST ELFT benchmark confirms its latent fingerprint algorithm is the most accurate in the world, outperforming all competition in rank-based search.

Innovatrics has the most accurate algorithm with a rank-1 hit rate of 93.3%, further strengthening its position as a leading provider of cutting-edge biometric solutions. According to the NIST ELFT Innovatrics nutrition report, Innovatrics is also top ranked in accuracy across all categories.

Hit rate is the most important metric derived from FNIR (false negative identification rate). The resulting value is the percentage of times that the correct subject appears at or above a rank in the candidate list. This is nowadays the most widely used method by forensic laboratories across the world where the results are reviewed manually.

“For law enforcement purposes, ours is now the most accurate algorithm for latent fingerprint matching,” explains Matus Kapusta, ABIS Business Unit Director at Innovatrics.

Latent fingerprints are those left on a crime scene, and the accuracy of the algorithm is crucial for correctly identifying suspects. Unlike other biometric algorithms, there are only a handful of companies submitting algorithms to the ELFT benchmarks – and Innovatrics has consistently ranked among the top ones.

Innovatrics ranked first in the NIST ELFT benchmark (September 14, 2023)

In the mode of work most used by law enforcement and forensic labs, Innovatrics outperformed all the competition in identifying latent fingerprints as measured by the NIST ELFT test

Innovatrics reached the top with a rank-5 hit rate of 95.1%, surpassing the competition as seen in the chart from the NIST ELFT nutrition report below and further strengthening its position as a leading provider of cutting-edge biometric solutions.

“Our deep focus on the criminal investigation aspects of our ABIS is reflected in the improvements. The upcoming version of ABIS is expected to be released in January 2024. Not only is it full of features that help law enforcement work more effectively, but it also yields better results in a shorter time,” explains Matus Kapusta, ABIS Business Unit Director at Innovatrics.

Innovatrics has scored exceptionally well in the so-called “lights-out” searches, a category where a threshold is used to filter out more than 90% of non-matching candidates. A higher threshold likely corresponds with fewer subjects for manual review, which saves the operator some time. With a hit rate of 82.4%, Innovatrics is ranked 2^nd in a category where the Rank-100 Hit Rate was measured at FPIR = 10%. This is also NIST’s preferred accuracy metric because operating costs grow with the rate of these two errors. 

All the results are from the official NIST ELFT report. Values and plots used in this report are derived from searching the 285 probes from the dataset entitled FBI-Provided Solved Dataset #1, where feature data was available but not provided (i.e., “lights-out” search), with ≈ 1 600 000 distractor subjects in the enrollment database.

Several countries on different continents have already opted for Innovatrics ABIS for their law enforcement, from Guinea in Africa to Southeast Asia to several states in Brazil.