Patent ID: 8190540

Claim:
A method of deciding whether to accept a specimen, comprising: provide a data set having information pieces about objects, each object having a number of modalities, the number being at least two; determine a first probability partition array (“Pm(i,j)”), the Pm(i,j) being comprised of probability values for information pieces in the data set, each probability value in the Pm(i,j) corresponding to the probability of an authentic match; determine a second probability partition array (“Pfm(i,j)”), the Pfm(i,j) being comprised of probability values for information pieces in the data set, each probability value in the Pfm(i,j) corresponding to the probability of a false match; identify a first index set (“A”), the indices in set A being the (i,j) indices that have values in both Pfm(i,j) and Pm(i,j); identify a no-match zone (“Z∞”) that includes the indices of set A for which Pm(i,j) is equal to zero, and use Z∞ to identify a second index set (“C”), the indices of C being the (i,j) indices that are in A but not Z∞; identify a third index set (“Cn”), the indices of Cn being the N indices of C which have the lowest λ values, where λ equals P fm ⁡ ( i , j ) k P m ⁡ ( i , j ) k , where N is a number for which the following is true: FAR Z ∞ ∪C N =1−Σ (i,j)εZ ∞ P fm ( i,j )−Σ (i,j)εC N P fm ( i,j )≦FAR determine indices of the specimen and compare the specimen's indices to Cn; and if the specimen indices are in Cn, then accept the specimen as being authentic.