Image Altered Finger Identification and Matching Using Fingerprint Matching

Abstract

Existing security measures rely on knowledge-based approaches like passwords or token based approaches such as swipe cards and passports to control access to physical and virtual spaces. Though ubiquitous, such methods are not very secure. Tokens such as badges and access cards may be shared or stolen. Furthermore, they cannot differentiate between authorized user and a person having access to the tokens or passwords. Biometrics such as fingerprint, face and voice print offers means of reliable personal authentication that can address these problems and is gaining citizen and government acceptance. Fingerprints were one of the first forms of biometric authentication to be used for law enforcement and civilian applications. Contrary to popular belief and despite decades of research in fingerprints, reliable fingerprint recognition is still an open problem. In this thesis, we present three specific contributions to advance the state of the art in this field. Reliable extraction of features from poor quality prints is the most challenging problem faced in the area of fingerprint recognition. FP is one of the most successful and matured biometric trait for the personal identification all over the world. Due to this, threats to AFIS are also increasing. FP alteration is one among them especially in border control security systems [12], [13]. The increased use of AFIS in immigration control and forensic application motivated the illegal immigrants and criminals to alter the FP for masking their identity. A number of websites are available in the internet that discusses the different ways of alteration of the FP. Cases related to altered FP is also reported all over the world. The above facts motivated to find a solution to defeat this problem. The development of the methods or algorithms for alteration detection, classification and matching is also motivated by different reason.