Patent ID: 7203343

Claim:
A method for finding one or more target biometric samples that are similar to or match a query biometric sample, comprising: generating a query feature vector from a query biometric vector that represents said query biometric sample, said query feature vector comprising a plurality of features and said query biometric vector comprising a set of characteristics; and comparing said query feature vector to a plurality of target feature vectors, each target feature vector representing a respective target biometric sample; wherein, a target biometric sample is a potential match to said query biometric sample when a threshold number of features in the target feature vector that corresponds to said target biometric sample are identical to features in said query feature vector, wherein the generating comprises: extracting a set of tiles that represents said query biometric sample, each tile including a plurality of characteristics; assigning an identification element to each said tile in said set of tiles; selecting a predetermined number of the identification elements; partitioning the selected identification elements into a plurality of partitioned groups; and applying a fingerprint function to each partitioned group to generate a set of features, said set of features representing said query feature vector.