Biostatistics Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Biostatistics, including details on statistics, uncertainty, probability, modeling.

From template to image: reconstructing fingerprints from minutiae points.

Ross A, Shah J, Jain AK

Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA. arun.ross@mail.wvu.edu

Most fingerprint-based biometric systems store the minutiae template of a user in the database. It has been traditionally assumed that the minutiae template of a user does not reveal any information about the original fingerprint. In this paper, we challenge this notion and show that three levels of information about the parent fingerprint can be elicited from the minutiae template alone, viz., 1) the orientation field information, 2) the class or type information, and 3) the friction ridge structure. The orientation estimation algorithm determines the direction of local ridges using the evidence of minutiae triplets. The estimated orientation field, along with the given minutiae distribution, is then used to predict the class of the fingerprint. Finally, the ridge structure of the parent fingerprint is generated using streamlines that are based on the estimated orientation field. Line Integral Convolution is used to impart texture to the ensuing ridges, resulting in a ridge map resembling the parent fingerprint. The salient feature of this noniterative method to generate ridges is its ability to preserve the minutiae at specified locations in the reconstructed ridge map. Experiments using a commercial fingerprint matcher suggest that the reconstructed ridge structure bears close resemblance to the parent fingerprint.

Published 14 February 2007 in IEEE Trans Pattern Anal Mach Intell, 29(4): 544-60.
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