Fingerprint representation methods based on B-Spline functions

Abstract

The global characteristics of a fingerprint image such as the ridge shape and ridge topology are often ignored in most automatic fingerprint verification system. In this paper, a new representative method based on B-Spline curve is proposed to address this problem. The resultant B-Spline curves can represent the global characteristics completely and the curves are analyzable and precise. An algorithm is also proposed to extract the curves from the fingerprint image. In addition to preserve the most information of the fingerprint image, the knot-points number of the B-Spline curve is reduced to minimum in this algorithm. At the same time, the influence of the fingerprint image noise is discussed. In the end, an example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the representation method.