Project Report

On
Biometric Fingerprint Minutiae
Extraction

Under the guidance of:

Prof. Debasis Samanta

Associate Professor

Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute

of Technology, Kharagpur

Submitted by: Solanki Kundu

Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology,

Shibpur
 Introduction
Biometrics is the technical term for body measurements and calculations.
It refers to ‘metrics’ (meaning measurement) related to human (bio)
characteristics. So, it is an automated method for recognizing individuals
based on measurable biological and behavioral characteristics. Biometric
authentication is the process of comparing information about the person’s
characteristics to his biometric ‘template’ in order to determine resemblance
and prove his genuineness. The reference template is first stored in a
database or some secure portable device such as smart card. The data stored
is then used to compare to that of the person’s biometric data to be
authenticated.
 Why should we use biometrics?
Unlike the use of other forms of authentication, such as passwords or tokens,
biometric recognition provides a strong link between an individual and a data
record. Biometrics can provide substantial help in guarding against attempts
to fraudulently establish multiple identities. By searching through the enrolled
biometric features, individuals who appear to have previously enrolled using a
different identity can be highlighted for further investigation. It is very difficult
to perform this type of check without the use of biometrics. As our world is
becoming more and more digitized, protecting confidential information is
becoming more and more difficult. Passwords and keys were once considered
sufficient to provide security but they look increasingly feeble in front of
sophisticated hacker attacks. The recent reports on network security
breaches and identity thefts suggest that a strong authentication system is
the only need today. This has put the focus on the study of biometric security
as it is being considered as the only effective way to prove an individual’s
identity. Biometric traits of an individual are inherent and unique, so they
serve our authentication purpose and helps in providing security to
confidential information also. The factors contributing pictorially summarized
as:

Image source: www.bayometric.com

 Basic Characteristics of biometric systems
Jain et al. in 1999 identified seven factors to be considered while considering
a physical, chemical or biological behaviour of human being to be a biometric
trait. Those factors are thus considered now as the basic characteristics of
any biometric system.

➢ Universality means that every person using the system should

possess the trait.
➢ Uniqueness means that the trait should be sufficiently different for
individuals in the relevant population such that they can be
distinguished from one another.
➢ Permanence means a trait should be reasonably invariant over
time with respect to the specific matching algorithm.
➢ Measurability (Collectability) relates to the ease of
acquisition or measurement of the trait and furthermore the acquired
data should be in a form that permits subsequent processing and
extraction of the relevant feature sets.
➢ Performance relates to the accuracy, speed etc of the technology
used. We use FAR (False Acceptance Rate), FRR (False Rejection
Rate), ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic), ERR (Equal Error
rate) etc.
➢ Acceptability relates to how well individuals in the relevant
population accept the technology such that they are willing to have
their biometric trait captured and accessed.
➢ Circumvention relates to the ease with which a trait might be
imitated using an artefact or substitute.

Contd...
 Applications of Biometrics

Biometric applications can be classified into three purposes:

➢ Verification
➢ Identification
➢ Duplicate checking

These purposes are served by biometric in various applications like:

❑ Logical Access Control: This application refers to gaining access

to a computer network at a corporation or business location or via a
secured remote connection from a distant location. Now-a-days
usernames and passwords have become very much prone to cyber
attacks. They can be easily compromised and hijacked. To combat this,
the biometric technology has been called upon to replace it in its total
entirety. For example, Fingerprint Recognition Single Sign-On solution is
a very simple and time saving login process.

❑ Physical Access Control: This refers to giving an employee of a

business or corporation access to a secure building or even a secure
office from within it. Traditional keys, badges etc get lost or stolen or
replicated. Even smart cards are having some limitations too. Fingerprint
Recognition and Hand Geometry Recognition are used in this application
the most along with Vein Pattern Recognition. These help to prevent ID
cards, badges or keys from losing, being stolen or fraudulent use of these.
Only legitimate employees whose identity has been 100% confirmed will
gain access to the secure areas. Fingerprint Recognition devices and
Hand geometry scanners can also work together to create a Multimodal
 Biometric solution (either in a synchronous or an asynchronous format)
and even operate with other non-Biometric security systems as well.
❑ Time and Attendance: Businesses and corporations, at all levels of
industry, have to keep track of the hours their employees have worked.
However, using manual based methods such as a time card or a
spreadsheet have proven to be reason of gigantic administrative
headache and also possess many security vulnerabilities including that of
someone giving attendance on behalf of absent buddy of his/her. The use
of Biometric technology can play an integral role in Time and Attendance
based applications, by combating the above problems. Hand Geometry
Recognition and Fingerprint Recognition are most used in this domain.

❑ Law Enforcement: Law enforcement agencies are also starting to

use biometric technology to confirm the identity of any suspects or
wanted person. Most widely used modality in this field is Fingerprint
Recognition. Iris, facial, vein pattern recognition are about to starting to
enter the market.

❑ Surveillance: Surveillance is nothing but keeping track on a large

mass of people somewhere. In this instance, it is the facial recognition
which is used the most. The primary reason for this is that this modality
can be secretly deployed into CCTV cameras, in order to positively identify
any known criminals or suspects.

Modalities
➢ Facial recognition
➢ Palm print
➢ Iris scan
➢ Voice recognition
➢ Fingerprint
➢ DNA
➢ Vein pattern
➢ Retina scan

Comparison:-
 Fingerprint Biometric
According to a study by Juniper, fingerprints are the most popular form of
biometric identification, leading other methods such as voice recognition,
facial recognition and iris scanning by a considerable margin.

Most familiar and convenient:

The popularity of fingerprints as biometric identifiers is partially due to the
fact that this is the oldest and the most familiar biometric form. The use
of fingerprints has been sustainable as a biometric identifier because their
patterns more or less remain fixed over time and are less susceptible to
wearing and age.
Fingerprints are also popular because they are convenient. Actually
making one to log into an account requires more effort than pressing down
one’s thumb. Similarly, speaking for a voice recognition login is also not
always convenient. But using a fingerprint is always quiet and
inconspicuous.

Multifactor Authentication:
Multifactor Authentication (MFA) is a security system that requires more than
one method of authentication from independent categories of credentials to
verify the user’s identity for a login or other transaction. It combines two or
more independent credentials→

• Knowledge (what the user knows)

• Possession (something that the user has)

• Inherence/biometric verification (what the user is)

Contd..
 Fingerprints and minutiae:

Fingerprint

A fingerprint is a distinct pattern of ridges and valleys on the finger surface of

an individual. A ridge is defined to be a single curved segment whereas a
valley is the area between two adjacent ridges. So the dark areas of the
fingerprint are called ridges and white area that exists between them is
known as valleys.

Source: Wikipedia

In case of a fingerprint identification system, the captured fingerprint image

needs to be matched against the stored fingerprint templates of every user in
the database. We need a fingerprint classification system that will help us to
severely restrict the size of the templates database. To accomplish this, we
extract the minutiae features and match against the input fingerprint. The
template size of minutiae-based fingerprint representation is small and most
of the fingerprint identification systems are based on minutiae.

Minutiae points

Minutiae points are the major features of a fingerprint image and are used in
the matching of fingerprints. These minutiae points are used to determine the
uniqueness of a fingerprint image. A good quality fingerprint image can have
25 to 80 minutiae depending on the fingerprint scanner resolution and the
placement of finger on the sensor.

Minutiae can be defined as the points where the ridge lines end or diverge. So
minutiae are the local ridge discontinuities and can be of many types:

• Ridge ending is the point where the ridge ends suddenly.

• Ridge bifurcation is the point where a single ridge branches out into two or
more ridges.

• Ridge dots are very small ridges.

• Ridge islands are slightly longer than dots and occupy a middle space
between two diverging ridges.

• Ponds or Lakes are the empty space between two diverging ridges.

• Spurs is a notch protruding from a ridge.

• Bridges are the small ridges that join two longer adjacent ridges.

• Crossovers are formed when two ridges cross each other.

Ridge endings and ridge bifurcations are the two most commonly used ones
as others are a combination of these two only.
 Minutiae based extraction in fingerprint
recognition:
Most of the automatic fingerprint recognition systems are based on local ridge
features known as minutiae. Hence it is extremely important to mark these
minutiae accurately and reject the false ones. However, fingerprint images are
prone to degradation and corruption due to factors such as skin variations and
impression conditions such as scars, dirt, humidity and non-uniform contact
with the scanning device. Thus it is necessary to apply some type of image
enhancement techniques before minutiae extraction. The most important step
in automatic fingerprint matching is to reliably extract the minutiae from the
captured fingerprint images.

Contd....
Minutiae extraction techniques are broadly classified into two types:-

• Techniques that work on binarized images

• Techniques that work on gray-scale images

As I have worked with minutiae extraction from binarized fingerprint image by

thinning it and using crossing number based method thereafter, here that
method will be shown only. I have taken to converting gray-scale image into
binarized one.

Contd...
We have a grayscale image of a fingerprint pattern below:

Source: Internet

Minutiae extraction process:

Contd...
 Input 3D image of fingerprint pattern:

A = imread ('grayscaleim.PNG');
imshow (A);

Contd.....
 Conversion to 2D:

B = rgb2gray(A);

imshow(B);

Contd...
 Binarization:
Fingerprint Binarization is the process of converting an 8-bit grayscale fingerprint
image into a 1-bit ridge image. This is virtually equivalent to thresholding.

C=im2bw(B);

We get bit streams like:

1111111111111111......0000..01..01101.... like this

Thinned binarized images with image post processing

This method of minutiae extraction is also known as skeletonization-based
minutiae extraction. Here again, pre-processing techniques are applied to
enhance the image and as explained in the above sections the image is
segmented and binarized. The binarized image is then thinned using an
algorithm that removes pixels from ridges until the ridges are one pixel wide.
After extracting the minutiae from the enhanced, binarized and thinned image
some post processing is performed on this final image to eliminate any
spurious minutiae.

Contd....
For thinning:

D=~bwmorph (C,’thin’, Inf);

Imshow (D);

Thinned image:

Contd...
 Crossing number based method:
Crossing number based is the most widely used method of minutiae
extraction in the thinned binarized images category. It is preferred over other
methods because of its computational efficiency and intrinsic simplicity. In
this method, a skeleton image is used where the ridge flow pattern is eight-
connected. As shown in the figure below, the local neighbourhood of each
ridge pixel in the image is scanned using a 3×3 window from which the
minutiae are extracted.

P4 P3 P2

P5 P P1

P6 P7 P8

Then the crossing number value is computed. The crossing number properties
can be used to classify a ridge pixel as an ending, bifurcation or non-minutiae
point. Figure below shows the crossing number properties.

CN Property

0 Isolated point

1 Ridge ending point

2 Continuing ridge point

3 Bifurcation point

4 Crossing point
For example, a ridge pixel with a CN of 0 will correspond to an isolated point and
a CN of 4 corresponds to a crossing point.

Fingerprint Recognition: