ORION provides true networking capability to support large AFIS networks and also supplies previously unavailable levels of fingerprint-matching speed and accuracy in fingerprint processing. Central to ORION's performance is a new image processor, known as the Contextual Enhancement Processor, that can improve poor quality fingerprints in a fraction of a second while it extracts the unique characteristics of each fingerprint and classifies the print. Smudged or heavily inked areas of the fingerprint are cleaned up electronically by the processor. If certain areas of the print are too smudged to process, they are blocked out, eliminating the problem of all previous systems, which would assign false minutiae in smudged areas. The enhancement process is capable of identifying consistent features even in poor areas of the print image through a technique that emulates the human interpretation process. ORION's modular design permits flexibility in configuring a system to meet the needs of identification bureaus of almost any size, including remote workstations and networked systems.