Fingerprint Ridge Line Extraction Based on Tracing and Directional Feedback

Fingerprint recognition and verification are always the key issues in intelligent technology and information security. Extraction of fingerprint ridge lines is a critical pre-processing step in fingerprint identification applications. Although existing algorithms for fingerprint extraction work well on good-quality images. Their performance decrease when handling poor-quality images. This paper addresses the ridge line extraction problem as curve tracking processes under the framework of probabilistic tracking. Each ridge line is modeled as sequential frames of a continuous curve and then traced by standard CONDENSATION algorithm in the area of computer vision. Additionally, local directional image is rectified with a feedback technique after each tracking step to improve the accuracy. The experimental results are compared with those obtained through existing well-known algorithms, such as local-binarization and sampling-tracing methods. In spite of greater computational complexity, the method proposed performs better both in terms of efficiency and robustness.