The German project “Touch‑less Person Identification by a Research‑Grade 3D‑4‑Finger Scanner” was carried out as a consortium under the BMBF “3Dsensation” alliance. The consortium comprised JENETRIC GmbH, acting as coordinator and system designer; ART‑KON‑TOR GmbH, responsible for user interface concepts; Docter Optics SE, providing optical subsystems; Linguwerk GmbH, delivering macroscopic scene analysis for presentation‑attack detection (PAD); the Technical University of Chemnitz, conducting user studies; Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Mechanics (IOF), handling 3D data acquisition; and the Zentrum für Bild‑ und Signalverarbeitung (ZBS), developing image‑processing algorithms. The project was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and originally scheduled for 26 months, later extended by four months to accommodate COVID‑19‑related delays, resulting in a total duration of approximately 30 months.
The core scientific objective was to develop a contact‑free 3D sensor capable of simultaneously capturing the fine‑scale ridge structure of all four fingers and both thumbs of a hand. The system was designed to meet the stringent image‑quality requirements of the FBI’s EBTS 2013 Appendix F, thereby ensuring that the captured 3D data could be compared with conventional 2D fingerprint databases. To this end, the consortium engineered a data‑processing pipeline that converts raw 3D point clouds into high‑resolution 2D fingerprint images. This pipeline incorporates 3D data enhancement, segmentation, fusion, and 3D‑to‑2D projection, followed by 2D image refinement. The resulting simulated 2D fingerprints preserve the minutiae and ridge patterns necessary for reliable identification.
A significant technical contribution was the exploration of PAD techniques tailored to 3D acquisition systems. The team defined system‑level requirements for spoof detection, prototyped several algorithms, and evaluated their performance against the quality of the acquired 3D data. Although the project did not achieve full 3D fingerprint matching—due to insufficient volumes of high‑quality 3D capture sequences—the PAD prototypes demonstrated the feasibility of detecting presentation attacks based on subtle micro‑structural cues in the 3D data.
The demonstrator, built by the consortium, showcases the complete workflow: a user places a hand in front of the sensor, the system captures the 3D geometry of all four fingers and thumbs without contact, processes the data in real time, and outputs a 2D fingerprint image that can be matched against existing databases. The user interface, developed by ART‑KON‑TOR, is designed to be intuitive and requires no prior knowledge, thereby ensuring a smooth user experience.
Throughout the project, the consortium conducted user studies at the Technical University of Chemnitz to assess usability and acceptance. The Fraunhofer IOF contributed advanced optical hardware, while ZBS supplied expertise in 3D point‑cloud processing and algorithm development. The project’s outcomes include a functional touchless 3D‑4‑finger scanner, a validated data‑processing chain that satisfies FBI standards, and a set of PAD methods adapted to 3D data. These results lay the groundwork for future work on robust 3D fingerprint matching and further refinement of contact‑free biometric identification systems.