How do fingerprint scanners work? What format are the scans themselves stored in?

Question

Basically, how do fingerprint scanners “capture” a fingerprint, and how does each scan compare to the stored fingerprint scan from when the scanner was set up?

In: Technology

Answer 1

Not an expert, but I used to work on police in-car software services. The fingerprint scanners they used at the time identified the branches and terminations of the ridges and recorded their relative positions. Those were called “minimals”. You can turn that into a map of your prints and use math/analysis techniques to match best fit.