Performance analysis of a parameterized minutiae-based approach for securing fingerprint templates in biometric authentication systems

Abstract

The fingerprint templates include almost the entire information about an individual’s fingerprints, and the user validation is totally determined by the fingerprint minutiae features. Due to the sort of attacks, the most challenging task is to shield the fingerprint templates (or minutiae features). The paper is concerned with the development of a parameterized minutiae-based approach to generate the secure biometric templates from the fingerprint images. The minutiae features were extracted from the individual’s fingerprint images, and then their associated parameters were explored to hide the real minutiae information. A minutiae-based transformation algorithm was employed by adding extra chaffs (fake minutiae) and remodeling the real minutiae to generate a secure vault that leads to a cancelable fingerprint template. As a fingerprint template contains only the transformed and fake minutiae, it is almost impossible for the attacker to induce the real minutia information. The proposed method assisted to create multiple dissimilar fuzzy vaults for a single fingerprint; thereby, the correlation attacks would be resisted. The proposed method achieved the highest accuracy in verification phase compared to other methods, and provided a novel contribution in the field of biometric security for protecting the fingerprint templates.