Noninvertible fingerprint transforms: Categorization of design mechanisms and discussion of evaluation techniques

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe explosive growth in fingerprint technologies within the past decade has seen the emergence of a dedicated field of research into securing fingerprint templates during storage in a database. While new fingerprint template protection techniques are often broadly classified as belonging to the well-known salting, noninvertible transforms, key binding, or key generation categories, methods within each category are currently lacking a sense of organization. This article aims to fill this gap by proposing a categorization of noninvertible fingerprint transforms based on their design mechanisms. Our survey of the current literature in this field reveals two prominent types of approaches, so we classify existing noninvertible fingerprint transforms into two main categories: perturbation-based and histogram-based. We also discuss the evaluation techniques used to assess the robustness of noninvertible fingerprint transforms in the literature. These contributions will serve to help researchers find their bearing in the growing fingerprint template protection field, thereby encouraging a deeper understanding of the field and faster progress in the development of more effective fingerprint template protection schemes.