Secure storage and matching of latent fingerprints using phase shifting digital holography

Abstract

This paper describes the secure storage and matching of latent fingerprints using phase shifting digital holography. A phase shifting digital holographic system is proposed for imaging of latent fingerprints, which can be applied in the criminal investigation field. Digital holography is one of the accurate and fast technique for measuring 3D information, by acquiring both amplitude and phase information from the object. Digital holography uses a Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) to record the interference pattern. In digital holography, the reconstructed image unavoidably contains the conjugate image and the zeroth order beam, resulting in low resolution. This problem can be overcomed by using phase shifting digital holography. Phase shifting digital holography is a technique by which multiple holograms are taken corresponding to the various phase differences between the object beam and the reference beam. One of the most secure storage methods is digital holographic data storage which provides a credible way in the fingerprint acquisition in the criminal investigation field. The phase shifting digital holograms of the latent fingerprint are acquired and then numerically reconstructed. The reconstructed fingerprint is then compared with the database after further processing to find whether it is a match or no match. The investigations have been conducted through experiments and computer simulations. The parameters used for analyzing the performance of the system are False Matching Rate (FMR), False Non-Matching Rate (FNMR) etc. This system shows a remarkable performance improvement over digital holographic techniques. The method can be explicitly used in forensic applications.