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Fingerprint Steps

We have completed a very reliable the feature extraction system which not only localizes the minutiae accurately, but also provides a quantitative assessment of the quality of the fingerprint image. We are presently exploring novel fingerprint features which can provide powerful discriminatory capability.

In our standard implementation there are eight intermediate processing steps to the feature extraction process. These steps and the reasons for performing them are listed below. We also show the graphical results at various points.
  1. Preprocessing - The input image is made suitable for further processing by image enhancement techniques.
  2. Computate of Block Directions - Determination of primary ridge direction in each sub-region of an image.
  3. Foreground/Background Segmentation - Identification of fingerprint area.
  4. Ridge Extraction - Extraction of ridge area within the foreground area.
  5. Blob Removal - Elimination of non-elongated small structures.
  6. Thinning and Morphology - Ridges are thinned into one pixel wide skeletons.
  7. Minutia Extraction - Determine location and orientation of ridge bifurcations and ridge terminations.
  8. Post processing - Elimination of extraneous minutia.
 
Input Image 		 
Orientation Fields
Input Image Orientation Fields
 
Ridges 		 
Thinned Image
Ridges Thinned Image
 
Minutia Features
Minutia Features

 
Contact: Sharath Pankanti Last updated: 6/7/02
 
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