Title: Exploring fingerprint matching through a topology-based perspective

Authors: Marina L. Gavrilova

Addresses: Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

Abstract: In the recent decade, the rapid development of biometric technologies for security applications spurred increased interest in both academic research community and industrial sectors. Still, the fingerprint recognition remains one of the core methodologies for person identification. Known since the time of the Babylonians, they used their thumbprints on clay tablets to verify their identity around 2,000 B.C. While the approach remains a reliable, efficient and a commonly accepted biometric, the methodology develops rapidly. This paper presents a survey of topology-based techniques for fingerprint recognition, and describes an original fingerprint alignment and matching scheme based on two powerful computational geometry data structures: the Voronoi diagram and the Delaunay triangulation.

Keywords: fingerprint matching; topology; Voronoi diagram; Delaunay triangulation; biometrics; minutiae set; ridge geometry; distance transform; fingerprint recognition; security; fingerprint alignment; computational geometry.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBM.2008.018661

International Journal of Biometrics, 2008 Vol.1 No.1, pp.20 - 35

Published online: 04 Jun 2008 *

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