fB

Can you please provide our readers with a brief background of the company?

ME

In 2001, Lumidigm started life as a spinout from a medical diagnostic company that was looking at ways to conduct non-invasive glucose monitoring. From a detailed optical interrogation of skin, it became apparent that the optical characteristics of subsurface skin are highly variable from person to person — the basis of a biometric. Lumidigm was formed to commercialize and expand on the use of this subsurface information to distinguish between people. Using critical development monies from the DoD, including the Air Force, Army, and Navy, as well as the intelligence agencies, including the NSA and CIA, Lumidigm was able to develop a robust fingerprinting platform. Our partnerships, team, and technology portfolio permitted Lumidigm to attract significant investment capital. Investors include top-flight venture firms as well as two important corporate investors: Intel Capital and Motorola Ventures. We are using these funds to market our offerings, round out our team, and target application development on top of our robust and field proven technology platform.

fB

Can you explain the LightPrint™ solution and what differentiates this technology from other fingerprint sensors?

ME

Traditional optical fingerprint sensors are able to capture and compare data from the surface of the finger — the fingerprint ridges. Fingerprints are an obvious choice for a biometric; we learned as children our fingerprints are unique. What we know now is that the foundation of those surface ridges, the physiological structure below the skin, provides the foundation of those the surface ridges. LightPrint™ sensors can look below the surface of the skin to that fingerprint foundation to capture and compare additional data about an individual's unique fingerprint, which significantly improves the real world effectiveness of LightPrint™, enabled biometric solutions.

fB

Why is this additional, subsurface fingerprint data important?

ME

There are a lot of things that can go wrong during the collection of surface information. An individual can have dirt or sweat on their fingertips, obscuring the ridges of the surface fingerprint. Fingers can be dry or worn, and individuals can have shallow or calloused surface fingerprint ridges. Or the individual may not place their finger on the sensor with the correct pressure or placement. In these situations, it can be difficult or impossible to collect enough surface fingerprint information to correctly identify an individual. On the other hand, because we look beyond the surface of the skin, we are not negatively impacted by these innocent and common situations. This renders existing approaches to fingerprint identification inadequate in any application where high accuracy under "real world" situations is required. LightPrint™ technology dramatically improves the usability of fingerprinting as a biometric tool.

Additionally, the complex optical properties of skin that LightPrint™ measures are very difficult to replicate. Therefore, spoofing or imitating a fingerprint is extremely difficult and expensive. The intelligence community and the United States Air Force have funded our work on preventing biometric spoofing.

fB

Can you describe some of the spoof detection capabilities of the LightPrint™ solution?

ME

LightPrint™ sensors use imaging and different colors of light to capture eleven unique parameters. These parameters are used to define what a living fingerprint will look like with a high level of specificity. We develop our models using test data from all known spoofs and a wide demographic range. This has provided us with a sensor that is extremely resistant to spoofing. In fact, we are currently working with a highly respected "red team" testing group to try and find vulnerabilities, which are then corrected and retested in an iterative process.

At Lumidigm, we believe that preventing spoofing is essential to providing a secure biometric. For this reason we have invested heavily in trying to spoof our system so that we can continually strengthen our antispoof capability. Lumidigm has the only commercially available biometric fingerprint solution with proven spoof detection capability.

fB

You state that your LightPrint™ solution is ideal for extreme environmental situations that conventional sensors can't handle. Can you please elaborate?

ME

Extreme environmental conditions can obscure surface fingerprint ridges, but they cannot prevent a good view of the subsurface fingerprint. For example, extreme humidity or rain can obscure the external ridges by partially or fully filling in the valleys, but Lumidigm sensors can still see the unaffected subsurface patterns and make a successful identification. Extremely dry weather, bright sunlight, even dirty fingers—all can prevent a good reading of the external fingerprint, making LightPrint's capacity to read the internal fingerprint ideal for such conditions.

After extensive evaluation, our sensors were chosen to prevent ticket fraud at a major international theme park. We were chosen for this deployment because our sensors work well in extreme environmental conditions. This includes direct sunlight, rain, high humidity, and cotton candy smudged fingers.

Lumidigm is based in Albuquerque, New Mexico so we see lots of dry fingers. Our sensors are able to capture high quality fingerprint images even on the driest of fingers.

fB

Lumidigm recently closed an $8.1 Million funding round. What does this mean for the company?

ME

Our investors provided the Lumidigm team with the confidence and capital to deploy our biometric technology to a broader range of customers and markets. It has also allowed us to increase our public profile as well as continue technology development activities to extend our advantage.

In the big picture, this investment guarantees a bright future for Lumidigm. Lumidigm will significantly impact the biometric industry for a long time by supplying secure, yet user friendly biometric tools.

fB

What do you see as the greatest challenge for your company?

ME

The biggest challenge for us is to educate the marketplace about what a customer should expect from a fingerprint biometric. Fingerprinting does not need to be painful, slow, or unable to work in "real life" situations. We need to get new and existing users of biometrics to understand that there are cost-effective alternatives to conventional biometric methods, and these alternatives really do work in "real life" situations and can protect against spoofing.

LightPrint™ technology is qualitatively different than other fingerprint technologies and excels in the "real world" applications.

fB

What will the next year hold for Lumidigm?

ME

We are currently engaged in our largest deployment to date. By the end of this summer millions of people will have used our sensors in outdoor access control environments. We will build on this key deployment through sales and partnerships throughout the biometric value chain.

Our extremely prolific research team is engaged in the embodiment of this technology in a wide range of appliances from the extremely mobile to the highest of security. I think you'll be surprised with what we have coming down the pike.

Thank you Peter for this opportunity to share a bit of the Lumidigm story.

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