Various image enhancement and matching techniques used for fingerprint recognition system

Abstract

For biometric identification or verification fingerprint images are most popular due to their uniqueness in nature. Image Enhancement Techniques (IETs) plays a vital role in Fingerprint Recognition (FPR) System and IETs are one of the most important stages in FPR system. Fingerprint images suffer problems related to brightness, poor contrast and blurring due to noise and motion etc. Fingerprint images may be corrupted and degraded due to variation in environmental conditions, skin, pressure on the sensors, and various other impression conditions. To overcome these problems, IETs are used. The main aim of implementing IET to the input image so that the visual quality or information contents are more suitable for a specific application or automated image processing. The performance of FPR system relies on the matching techniques that depend on the input fingerprint image quality and algorithm used. Depending upon the matching process there are various FPR system matching techniques. Enhancing the fingerprint images by IETs provide more reliable feature extraction information for the matching process. This paper presents an overview of various IETs used for FPR system, then types, applications and role in FPR system for researchers. A method is proposed which uses these techniques for better performance of the FPR system by improving the quality of fingerprint images using IETs.