ISSN: 2312-7694

Ali et al. / International Journal of Computer and Communication System Engineering (IJCCSE)

Gabor Filter
Ali Abdul Azeez Mohammad baker
Computer Science Department
Kufa university
Najaf/Iraq
alia.qazzaz@uokufa.edu.iq

AbstractGabor filter is a powerful way to enhance biometric

images like fingerprint images in order to extract correct features
from these images, Gabor filter used in extracting features
directly asin iris images, and sometimes Gabor filter has been
used for texture analysis. In fingerprint images The even
symmetric Gabor filter is contextual filter or multi-resolution
filter will be used to enhance fingerprint imageby filling small
gaps (low-pass effect) in the direction of the ridge (black regions)
and to increase the discrimination between ridge and valley
(black and white regions) in the direction, orthogonal to the ridge,
the proposed method in applying Gabor filter on fingerprint
images depending on translated fingerprint image into binary
image after applying some simple enhancing methods to partially
overcome time consuming problem of the Gabor filter.

Global features: these features involved two

important features which are core and delta ,core
can be defined as the top most point on the inner
most ridge while delta point can be defined as the
point where three ridge directions
meet as
illustrated in figure(1), these features also called
singular points or singularities.

Index TermsGabor filter, fingerprint, binary image, biometrics,

orientation.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Every person own ten unique fingerprints. This makes

fingerprint matching system one of the most reliablesystems
for identifying people, fingerprint image may be shown as a
uniform pattern of parallel ridges and valleys run together,
ridges are the black regions while valleys are the white regions
in fingerprint image as illustrated in figure (1).some permanent
(like ridge ending and bifurcate) and semi-permanent features
such as scars, cuts are also shown in a fingerprint image.
There are many features can be discoveredin fingerprint
image which enable fingerprint matching system to make
sound judgment about whether any two prints came from same
finger or not, these features can be divided into two groups
Local features : A local feature consists of several
components, each component typically derived
from a spatially restricted region of the fingerprint ,
these features extracted from ridges by analyzing
the ridge behavior as individual or the relations
between consecutive ridges this group of features
involves many features, some of these features are
Ridge ending, bifurcation, Dot or island, Hook,
Lake, and Bridge, These features also called
minutiae and most fingerprint identification systems
depend only on only ridge ending and bifurcate in
matching process as illustrated in figure(1), these
features used in matching any two prints and enable
system in making decision if these two prints
identical or not. There are about (70 to 150)
minutiae in a typical fingerprint image.

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Fig. 1

fingerprint image

To extractglobal features precisely, fingerprint image must

be enhanced by using perfect methods of contextual filter or
multi-resolution filter, and if the enhancement step uses a
single filter convolution for the entire fingerprint image, it
creates significant number of false minutiae, a large number of
true minutiae are missed and, a significant error in the location
(position and orientation) of minutiae may be introduced.
II. PROPOSED METHOD
The proposed system consist of the following steps as
illustrated in figure (2)

Applying median filter.

Normalization.

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Ali et al. / International Journal of Computer and Communication System Engineering (IJCCSE)

Calculating pixels orientation by using Sobel image.

Dividing image into blocks, and calculating blocks
orientation.

Translatingfingerprint image into binary.

CalculatingGabor filter for each pixel.

Each one of the above steps can be illustrated as follows
A. Applying median filter

M
o
N ( i , j )

M o

vo ( I ( i , j ) M ) 2
V
vo ( I ( i , j ) M ) 2
V

if

I (i , j ) M

otherwise

Where, M and V are the mean and variance of the fingerprint

image I (i, j), Mo and Vo are the desired mean and variance
values.
The result of applying this process is illustrated in figure (3)

The fingerprint image divided into (33) matrices, each

matrix translated into a victor with (9) values that arranged in
any order(ascending or descending)then the center of the
matrix will be replaced with the middle value of the vector, the
result of applying this filter can be illustrated in figure (3).
Original image

Applying median filter

Normalization

Translating to
a .Original image

binary image

b. applying median filter

Applying Sobel masks to

calculate orientation for each
pixel

Dividing fingerprint image into blocks and

Calculating blocks orientation.
c. normalization result

Fig. 3

Applying median filter and normalization process

C. Applying Sobel masks

Constructing and applying Gabor filter for each pixel in
binary fingerprint image
Fig. 2

block diagram of the proposed system

Orientation in each pixel can be calculated by using Sobel

vertical and horizontal masks as illustrated in figure (4)
Z1

Z2

Z3

-1

-2

-1

-1

Z4

Z5

Z6

-2

Z7

Z8

Z9

-1

B. Normalization process
Normalization process is used to fixed the intensity values of
the pixels within a desired or wanted range by applying
equation (1)

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a- Image

b- Vertical mask

c- Horizontal mask

Fig. 4

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Sobel masks

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The orientation value in each pixel will be calculated by
using the following equations
y( p, q) ( z7 2 z8 z9 ) ( z1 2 z 2 z3 ) (2)

x( p, q) ( z3 2 z6 z9 ) ( z1 2 z4 z7 ) (3)
D. Dividing image into blocks, and calculating blocks
orientation
The fingerprint image will be divided into non overlap
blocks with size of (WW) , and the orientation of each block
will be calculated as follows
i

w
2

v y (i, j )

p i

v x (i, j )

w
2

w
2

2 x ( p, q) y ( p, q) (4)

w
w
q j
2
2

w
2

p i

(i, j )

2
x

c- binary image

Fig. 5

Binary image

F. Calculating Gabor filter for each pixel

( p, q) 2y ( p, q) (5)

w
w
q j
2
2

v y (i, j )
1
tan 1
(6)
2
v x (i, j )

The fingerprint image will be divided into (W W) overlap

blocks and these blocks will be filtered with Gabor filter. An
even symmetric Gabor filter has the following general form in
the spatial domain

y 2
1 x

G ( x, y, f , ) Exp 12 12 cos(2fx1 ) (8)

2 x y

Where is The block orientation and (w =17)

E. Translating fingerprint image into binary image
The fingerprint image will be converted into a binary
representation as shown in figure (5) by dividing the image
into (WW) non overlap blocks and calculating the mean for
each block by using equation (7)

bloack mean

w1 w1

1
image(i, j) (7)
w w i 0 j 0

Binary image (i, j) =255

if enhanced image pixel (i, j) block mean
Binary image (i, j) =0
if enhanced image pixel (i, j) < block mean

X 1 x cos y sin (9)

Y1 x sin y cos (10)
Where, () is the frequency of the sinusoidal plane wave
along the direction () from the x-axis, and (x, y) are the
space constants of the Gaussian envelope along x and y axes,
respectively. In our proposed method we used =0.1,
x=4,and y=4, The result of applying Gabor filter is illustrate
in figure (6).

a- Original image

Fig. 6
a-original image

b- Image after apply Gabor filter

Applying Gabor filter

b- enhanced image

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ISSN: 2312-7694
Ali et al. / International Journal of Computer and Communication System Engineering (IJCCSE)
III. RESULTS
After applying the proposed method on fingerprint images
the results of three examples will be illustrated
Example 1:-

c-binary image

d-Gabor image

Fig. 8

results (2)

Fig. 9

results (3)

Example 3:-

a-original image

c-binary image

b-enhanced image

a-original image

b-enhanced image

c-binary image

d-Gabor image

d-Gabor image

Fig. 7

results (1)

Example 2:-

IV. CONCLUSION

a-original image

b-enhanced image

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Applying Gabor filter on binary image simplified

calculation and makes perfect enhanced results.
Multi resolution filters are time consuming compared
with simple filters.

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Ali et al. / International Journal of Computer and Communication System Engineering (IJCCSE)

Good enhancement methods make fingerprint

system more reliable.
REFERENCES

1[Iwasokun 2012] Iwasokun Gabriel

Babatunde, AkinyokunOluwole Charles, Alese
Boniface Kayode, and OlabodeOlatubosun
"Fingerprint Image Enhancement: Segmentation to
Thinning",(IJACSA) International Journal of
Advanced Computer Science and Applications,
2012.
2[Kumud 2011]
KumudArora, and
Dr.PoonamGarg "A Quantitative Survey of
various Fingerprint Enhancement techniques",
International Journal of Computer Applications,
2011.

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3[Liu 2008] Liu Wei "Fingerprint

Classification Using Singularities Detection",
international journal of mathematics and computers
in simulation, 2008.
4[Peihao 2007] Peihao Huang, Chia-Yung
Chang, Chaur-Chin Chen "Implementation of an
Automatic Fingerprint Identification System",
IEEE, 2007.
5[Salil 2002] Salil Prabhakar, Anil K. Jain,
and Sharath Pankanti "Learning fingerprint
minutiae location and type", Watson Research
Center, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598, USA, 2002.
6[William 2001] William K. Pratt "digital
image processing ", Los Altos, California, USA,
2001.

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