Robust fingerprint acquisition: a comparative performance study

Abstract

A comparative study on multiple participants was undertaken to quantify the ability of a multispectral imaging fingerprint sensor to perform reliable biometric matching in the presence of extreme sampling conditions. These extreme conditions included finger wetness, dirt, chalk, acetone, bright ambient light, and low contact pressure during image acquisition. The comparative study included three commercially available total internal reflectance sensors, run in parallel with the multispectral imaging sensor and under identical sampling conditions. Performance assessments showed that the multispectral imaging sensor was able to provide fingerprint images that produced good biometric performance even under conditions in which the performance of the total internal reflectance sensors was severely degraded. Additional analysis showed that the performance advantage of the multispectral images taken under these conditions was maintained even when matched against enrollment images collected on total internal reflectance sensors.