Neurotechnology (company)

Neurotechnology was formed in 1990 in Vilnius, Lithuania, with the primary goal of exploiting neural networks for applications such as computer vision, biometric person identification, and artificial intelligence. In 1991, the company released its first fingerprint identification technology for criminal inquiry in 1991. The following research by the company resulted in the first fingerprint identification algorithm for civil usage, which was made public in 1997. Since then, the company has created over 200 products, earning recognition from worldwide organisations such as the US National Institute of Standards and Technology.^[5]

In 2009, the Polish Security Printing Works used the Neurotechnology VeriFinger fingerprint recognition technology to issue the E-Passports that were required by all countries in the Schengen Agreement under EU Law.^[6]

In 2017, the company unveiled an ultrasonic particle manipulation 3D printing method that could be used to 3D print entire electronic objects, such as a smartphone.^[7]

The DRC's Independent National Electoral Commission deployed the Neurotechnology MegaMatcher ABIS during the 2018 Democratic Republic of Congo general election, uncovering 5.3 million duplicate voter records.^[8] Corneille Nangaa Yobeluo, President of the National Independent Electoral Commission (CENI) stated: "Neurotechnology helped us achieve our goals and exceeded our expectations by starting and completing the deduplication process in record time, and they were able to identify millions of duplicates".^[9][10]

Since 2019, Neurotechnology has held first place in the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Proprietary Fingerprint Template (PFT) evaluations, up against 39 algorithms submitted from 22 vendors.^[11]

MegaMatcher ABIS was used alongside fingerprint and/or facial recognition during the 2020 Ghanaian General Election. It was used to de-duplicate the database of 17,027,641 eligible voters, identifying 15,860 attempted multiple registrations.^[12]

In March 2021, The Neurotechnology product MegaMatcher was used in the Indian Aadhaar ID scheme,^[12] described as "the most sophisticated ID programme in the world" by the World Bank Chief Economist Paul Romer.^[13] Neurotechnology, alongside consortium partner Tata Consultancy Services, were selected to provide a deduplication system for the Aadhaar scheme using fingerprint, face and iris biometric recognition.^[14]

In 2014, the Neurotechnology's product VeriFinger was used by hacker Jan Krissler to recreate the German defense minister Ursula von der Leyen's fingerprint, using only a few high-definition images^[15] taken using a “standard photo camera”.^[16]