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# Homeland Security; Biometrics; Fingerprint; Whorl

A NIST software program assigns a scanned fingerprint with a quality level ranging from 1 for a high-quality print to 5 for an unusable print. Everyone's fingerprints fit into only a few basic patterns, "loops," "whorls," "arches," and "tents." This colorized fingerprint is a whorl pattern.

*ITL, biometrics, minutiae, pattern recognition,

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November 2, 2004

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