The invention is directed to an arrangement for the optoelectronic
recording of large-area fingerprints, particularly for acquiring prints
of the entire palm of the hand. The object of the invention is to find a
novel possibility for recording the papillary ridge pattern of a hand
which permits a complete optoelectronic image recording with one-time
placement of large-area concave skin parts without the use of optical
beam paths that are subject to contamination and without having to accept
a loss of resolution. This object is met, according to the invention, in
that the support body for supporting the skin parts has the basic shape
of a cylinder providing a portion of the outer surface with a sufficient
radian measure and radius as support surface, the end faces of the
support body are each provided with a conical recess which is arranged
coaxially around the cylinder axis in order to couple in an illumination
beam path and an imaging beam path through the surface lines of the
conical recesses, and the imaging beam path and a linearly extending
image sensor are rotatable synchronously around the cylinder axis in
order to record successive line-shaped strips of the frustrated total
reflection at the illuminated outer surface of the support body with the
supported skin part.