The conventional method of fingerprint alignment using reference points does not work well for partial fingerprints due to the limited or non-availability of reference points. Moreover, matching of partial fingerprints using existing techniques is challenging as partial fingerprints lack enough distinguishing information. Even if fingerprints consists of sufficient information, the varying quality of different parts of fingerprint affects recognition process. In this paper, a new paradigm in the form of region-based approach that uses all available fingerprint ridge structure for aligning the fingerprints is proposed. Additionally, a new metric to compute individual local region similarity based on region’s quality, size and consistency of its neighbouring regions is proposed and used in deriving the global similarity for matching process. Although the proposed approach is computationally intensive, yet, the error rate is close to zero as the experimental results shows. The method is most suitable in applications where perfect identification is required such as forensic investigations.
Utility of Quality Metrics in Partial Fingerprint Recognition
