Minutiae Persistence among Multiple Samples of the Same Person’s Fingerprint in a Cooperative User Scenario

Abstract

A significant challenge in the development of automated fingerprint recognition algorithms is dealing with missing minutiae. While it is generally assumed that some minutiae will always be missing between multiple samples of the same fingerprint, this assumption has never been empirically evaluated. An important factor influencing minutiae persistence in civilian fingerprint recognition applications is the consistency with which a user places their finger on the fingerprint scanner during fingerprint image acquisition. This paper investigates the probability of a reference minutia repeating in another sample of the same person's fingerprint, when that probability depends on user consistency alone. The investigation targets cooperative users in a civilian fingerprint recognition application. To simulate this scenario, a database of 800 fingerprint samples from 100 participants was collected. Analysis of the database showed that the median probability of a reference minutia repeating in another sample of the same fingerprint is 0.95 with an interquartile range of 0.04. Combining multiple samples of the same fingerprint to filter out only the most reliable reference minutiae was shown to improve this probability. A complementary study demonstrated that automatic feature extractors and matchers may lower minutiae repeatability, but that user consistency is nevertheless the most influential factor. Bifurcation Termination 76