ANNOUNCEMENT FBI INTEGRATED AUTOMATED FINGERPRINT IDENTIFICATION SYSTEM (IAFIS), POLICY FOR DATA COMPRESSION POC Thomas Hopper, Technical reference, 10th and Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Washington, D.C. 20535 202/324-3506. In association with the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS/FBI), the FBI announces the following plan for compression rates for digital fingerprint images. The Electronic Fingerprint Transmission Specifications (EFTS) establishes image quality standards for card- and live-scan equipment. Fingerprint image captured on systems that are certified to comply with EFTS image quality specifications shall be compressed to a maximum average ratio of 15:1 using the Wavelet/Scalar Quantization (WSQ) algorithum. Fingerprint images captured on grandfathered system with MIQR certification shall be compressed to a maximum average compression ratio of 5:1 using WSQ. The average compression ratio is measured as the average across several sets of 1.5 by 1.6 inch rolled impressions. Once the algorithm has been caliberated to the source image characteristics with this procedure, then images of any dimension can be compressed with the same compression parameter settings.

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