The Study of Three-Dimensional Fingerprint Recognition in Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Fingerprints play a central role in any field where person identification is required. In forensics and biometrics, three-dimensional fingerprint-based imaging technologies, and corresponding recognition methods, have been vastly investigated. In cultural heritage, preliminary studies provide evidence that the three-dimensional impressions left on objects from the past (ancient fingerprints) are of paramount relevance to understand the socio-cultural systems of former societies, to possibly identify a single producer of multiple potteries, and to authenticate the artist of a sculpture. These findings suggest that the study of ancient fingerprints can be further investigated and open new avenues of research. However, the potential for capturing and analyzing ancient fingerprints is still largely unexplored in the context of cultural heritage research. In fact, most of the existing studies have focused on plane fingerprint representations and commercial software for image processing. Our aim is to outline the opportunities and challenges of digital fingerprint recognition in answering a range of questions in cultural heritage research. Therefore, we summarize the fingerprint-based imaging technologies, reconstruction methods, and analyses used in biometrics that could be beneficial to the study of ancient fingerprints in cultural heritage. In addition, we analyze the works conducted on ancient fingerprints from potteries and ceramic/fired clay sculptures. We conclude with a discussion on the open challenges and future works that could initiate novel strategies for ancient fingerprint acquisition, digitization, and processing within the cultural heritage community.

A Comprehensive Review of Unimodal and Multimodal Fingerprint Biometric Authentication Systems: Fusion, Attacks, and Template Protection

“…Biometric technology, has been the most actively researched. It has been, and remains highly popular because of the availability of numerous sources for data collection, including the ten fingers, because it is inherently simple to obtain, and its established application and gathering by immigration and law enforcement (99) (100).…”

Fingerprint Systems: Sensors, Image Acquisition, Interoperability and Challenges

“…This process has some advantages such as simplicity, affordability, and compact setup. However, existing approaches in the literature using this strategy have a drawback of long time consumption due to the additional computation of the correspondences between pixel points [ 10 ]. Figure 16 illustrates the basic setup of stereo vision scanning.…”

“…Later, it was widely used in governmentrelated verification, for instance, integration of finger and face in passport and border control systems [9]. The fingerprint as a biometric modality is now prevalent in multiple applications related to civil activities such as attendance systems, access control, cellular authentication, e-commerce and information security applications [6,10]. The fingerprint biometric system has been investigated using contact prints and latent and contactless images ranging from low to high resolution [2].…”

Artist profiling using micro-CT scanning of a Rijksmuseum terracotta sculpture

“…Wet, soft clay is malleable and records every impression. When fired, clay becomes a hard and water-resistant solid known as “terracotta,” an Italian word meaning “clay that has been fired.” Hence, the majority of preserved fingermarks have been found on clay ( 1 ), which was used by artisans from various societies to create everyday items such as tableware, cooking utensils, vessels, figurines, and tiles. In ideal conditions, the impressions on clay can be preserved for centuries.…”

“…( 5 , 7 ) implement methods of age and sex determination from fingermarks on sherds at Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath in Israel. Despite the renewed interest in preserved fingermarks in archaeology, research into 3D imaging technologies and computational methods for investigating fingermarks and toolmarks on sculptures has lagged behind ( 1 ). The primary reason is that capturing fingermarks on large amounts of archaeological finds with 2D portable cameras is a simpler and faster approach than with 3D volumetric imaging for any quantitative population studies needed in paleodermatoglyphics.…”