Fujitsu develops world's smallest vein sensor

(Credit: Fujitsu)

Consider fingerprint scanning a thing of the past. Fujitsu announced yesterday that it has made the world’s smallest and slimmest vein sensor. Unlike a fingerprint sensor, the device uses the veins in your palms instead of fingerprints for verification. All users have to do is wave their palm over the device and let it scan the veins.

Vein authentication technology reads the pattern of veins just under the skin in the finger or palm. As palm veins tend to grow or change due to various conditions, only the thicker veins are scanned to reduce errors. Of course both fingerprint and vein scanning are highly accurate with few occurrences of false positives (two different individuals having the same prints). However, vein scanning requires no physical contact, which some people may prefer.

This sensor is very small, just slightly larger than a Japanese 500-yen coin. Having a much smaller size greatly increases the type of products that this sensor can be used in, such as mobile phones or laptops.

The new system in this scanner makes use of a high-speed image capture system that reduces the time it takes to scan. Compared to earlier versions where you had to hold your hands over the sensor for a few moments, this new system requires users to wave their hands over the sensor instead.

Fujitsu hasn’t released details on when the product could hit the market. It did however, hint at a possible business notebook that would be US$242 more expensive then equivalent models without the sensor.