Title: Fingerprint image: pre- and post-processing

Authors: M. Usman Akram, Anam Tariq, Shoab A. Khan, Sarwat Nasir

Addresses: Department of Computer Engineering College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering National University of Science and Technology (NUST) Rawalpindi, Pakistan. ' Department of Computer Engineering College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering National University of Science and Technology (NUST) Rawalpindi, Pakistan. ' Department of Computer Engineering College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering National University of Science and Technology (NUST) Rawalpindi, Pakistan. ' Department of Telecommunication College of Signals National University of Science and Technology (NUST) Rawalpindi, Pakistan

Abstract: Automatic Fingerprint Identification Systems (AFIS) are widely used for personal identification due to uniqueness of fingerprints. Minutiae-based fingerprint matching techniques are normally used for fingerprint matching. Fingerprint matching results and their accuracy depends on presence of valid minutiae. In this paper, we present a new technique for fingerprint image post-processing. This post-processing is used to eliminate a large number of false extracted minutiae from skeletonised fingerprint images. We propose a windowing post-processing method that takes into account the neighbourhood of each minutia within defined window and check for minutia validation and invalidation. We also present a complete pre-processing system including new segmentation technique that is required to extract region of interest (ROI) accurately from a fingerprint image. The results are confirmed by visual inspections of validated minutiae of the FVC2004 reference fingerprint image database. Experimental results obtained by the proposed approach show efficient reduction of false minutiae.

Keywords: pre-processing; feature extraction; false minutiae; windowing technique; valid minutiae; segmentation; image post-processing; fingerprints; biometrics; biometric identification; invalid minutiae elimination; automatic fingerprint identification systems; AFIS; fingerprint enhancement; fingerprint matching; fingerprint images.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBM.2008.018664

International Journal of Biometrics, 2008 Vol.1 No.1, pp.63 - 80

Published online: 04 Jun 2008 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article