Membrane
With the introduction of new livescan fingerprint and palm print systems, the use of messy ink and paper cards has been made largely obsolete. Livescan systems are advanced digital photography solutions that create high-quality digital images of fingerprints and palm prints and electronically distribute them to identification services. Livescan instruments must be able to collect fingerprints from a wide cross section of people—including those with very fine, worn, scarred or cracked fingerprint ridges and varying degrees of skin moisture content. Most systems are optimized for individuals with well-defined ridges on their fingers and sufficient moisture content in their hands. In general, younger people fit this description and have little or no trouble with their fingerprints being captured on any certified scanner. However, problems arise when fingers are too wet or too dry. For the few (estimated at less than one percent of the population) individuals with palmar hyperhidrosis—a disorder characterized by excessive sweating on the hands—capturing a usable fingerprint can be very difficult with livescan systems. As troublesome as this hereditary disorder can be, due to its rarity, it accounts for a small amount of rejected fingerprint scans. A far more common impediment to capturing quality fingerprints is xeroderma—dry skin. By some estimates, up to 20 percent of the population has dry skin, with more women than men between the ages of 10 and 60 affected. And with one in five people living with xeroderma, it is not solely a problem associated with skin aging and can lead to poor quality fingerprint captures across a wide population group.
