NEC Corporation of America and Cross Match Technologies Inc. have partnered to put multimodal biometrics on handheld devices.

Cross Match has integrated NEC’s Neoface facial recognition and automated latent print matching technologies into its SEEK mobile handheld device. The NEC technology leverages the SEEK camera for image acquisition and searching capabilities. This system can complete local matching of photos and latent prints against a watch list, enabling faster identification before sending the biometric data to additional databases for further research.

NEC’s Neoface technology can handle highly compressed image to as low as 2,000 bytes and inter-eye distance of as low as 24 pixels.

The two companies will be demonstrating the product at this week’s Biometric Consortium Conference in Tampa, Fla.