SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DETERMINING LIKELY IDENTITY IN A BIOMETRIC DATABASE

A system and method for finding one or more target biometric samples that are similar to or match a query biometric sample. A query feature vector is generated from a query biometric vector. The query biometric vector represents the query biometric sample as a set of characteristics. The characteristics are either invariable or variable. The query feature vector comprises a plurality of features which are derived from the query biometric vector using a process that includes canonicalization of the characters in the biometric vector. The query feature vector is compared to a plurality of similarly created target feature vectors, each target feature vector representing a respective target biometric sample. A target biometric sample is a potential match to the query biometric sample when a threshold number of features in the corresponding target feature vector are identical to features in the query biometric vector.