Fingerprint archivesMentalix wins contract to convert Texas fingerprint archive
Mentalix Inc. was recently awarded a contract by Texas’ Department of Public Safety’s Crime Records Service to scan more than 1.4 million fingerprint cards from its oldest archive
Mentalix Inc. was recently awardeda contract by Texas’ Department of Public Safety’s Crime Records Service to scan more than 1.4 million fingerprint cards from its oldest archive.
Under the contract, Mentalix will format and upload 1.4 million fingerprint cards from individuals born prior to 1940 to Texas’ Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) database, which currently only contains biometric information on individuals born after 1939.
Uploading the data will help law enforcement officials tackle cold cases as they must manually search for fingerprint cards for suspects born before 1940. With these last 1.4 million fingerprints, all of Texas’ data will now have been stored electronically.
According to the company, the age of the cards and their varying formats will prove to be a challenge in scanning the documents. In addition to just segmenting and cropping fingerprint images, Mentalix will also store full images from both sides of each card as well as demographic data.
