Simultaneous Latent Fingerprint Recognition: A Preliminary Study

Presented by : MONIKA 7016015

TERMS AND DEFINATIONS

Simultaneous latent impressions: Two or more ridge impressions from the

same hand or foot deposited concurrently which may not be immediately visible to the naked eye are called simultaneous latent impressions.
Minutiae : It is the term used to define common micro features in a finger

print. Common minutiae points are the intersection of Bifurcations, ending points of Islands and the center point of the sweat glands.
Ridge : In the biometric process of finger scanning, a ridge is a curved line in

a finger image. Some ridges are continuous curves, and others terminate at specific points called ridge endings.
Type Lines: Ridges that diverge are called Type lines.

 Level 1 Details: It involves the general ridge flow of a fingerprint that is

pattern of loops, arches, whorls visible to naked eye. The examiner compares this information to the exemplars print in order to exclude a print that has very clear dissimilarities.
Level 2 Details: It involves ridge characteristics like islands, dots, forks

etc. formed as the ridge begins, end, join or bifurcate.

Level 3 Details: It involves microscopic ridge attributes such as width of

ridge, shape of its edge or presence of a sweat pore near a particular ridge.

Classification Of Fingerprints
Fingerprint classification is a

a. b. c. d. e.

technique used to assign a fingerprint into one of the several pre-specified types already established in the literature which can provide an indexing mechanism. Fingerprints are classified into five classes as shown in figure: whorl (W) right loop (R) left loop (L) arch(A) tented arch (T)

Characteristics of Ridge

Major Problems in the field

There is no established standard to identify simultaneous latent fingerprints

due to which many criminal cases remain unsolved.

The approach used in identifying fingerprints is manual and time consuming

and they do not provide satisfying results.

There is very little information to generate statistical results on the error rates

that could be used in the court or by forensic fingerprint examiners.

There is no automated system that compares simultaneous latent fingerprint

impressions with a given database.

Standards in the Field

The most recent working draft standard for simultaneous impression examination was developed and released by SWGFAST. The document includes standards for :
Analyzing two or more friction ridge impressions to determine whether they

are consistent with having been deposited on an object simultaneously. Analyzing a simultaneous impression to determine how it will be compared. Conclusions from the comparison of a simultaneous impression with known exemplars. Verification of conclusions. Documenting the examination. Reporting results.

ACE-V Technique
Analyze Compare Evaluate Verify

Analyze: The conclusion of the analysis process is a determination as to

whether sufficient information exists to proceed to the next phase. Compare - The comparison process introduces the known exemplar with which the latent print is to be compared. Evaluate: The result of the comparison is the evaluation process or making a conclusion. Verify: The final process is verification. The general rule is that all identifications must be verified by a second qualified expert.

Proposed Approach
In this approach, a semiautomatic algorithm has been provided to speed-up the identification process of simultaneous fingerprints. It is a two stage approach designed as an add-on tool to augment the capability of existing fingerprint recognition systems.
Isolation of each print from simultaneous impression

Calculating top matches for each print

Establishing simultaneity for only top matches and comparing.

Stage-II

Stage-I

Stage - I
Minutiae extraction: Minutiae are specific points in a finger image. There are two main types, known as ridge endings and bifurcations. Sometimes, other details, such as the points at which scars begin or terminate, are considered minutiae. The number and locations of the minutiae vary from finger to finger in any particular person, and from person to person for any particular finger (for example, the thumb on the left hand). When a set of finger images is obtained from an individual, the number of minutiae is recorded for each finger. Minutiae details are recorded in three levels described as follows :
I.

Level1 Details : visible to naked eye . used to exclude a print that has very clear dissimilarities.

II. Level2 Details : Level-2 minutiae are extracted from a fingerprint image using the ridge

tracing minutiae extraction algorithm . Each ridge in the skeleton is labeled with a number so that each detected minutiae is associated with one or two ridge numbers. It approximates the ridge with piecewise linear lines. Ridge detection is therefore not pixel-wise but stepwise. This approach is based not only on the location relationship of the minutiae, but also the associate ridge relationship and the certainty level of the minutiae. This is very important for noisy fingerprint image where a large number of spurious minutiae will be initially detected.

III.Level3 Details:

Level-3 features are extracted using curve evolution based algorithm. Edge detection algorithm is applied on the input fingerprint image. Detected edges are used as initial contour . Once the contour is obtained, curve tracing is used to classify the fingerprint features as pores, ridges and dots. Every blob of size 2-40 pixels is classified as a pore and the center point of the blob is used as the pore feature. The ridge contour (edge of a ridge) features are the x, y coordinates of the pixel and direction of the contour at that pixel. Any blob of size less than 0.02 that does not lie on a ridge is marked as a dot and the corresponding x, y coordinates are stored. If a blob or a ridge structure whose width is substantially thinner (less than 40% of average local ridge width) and size is greater than 0.02, then it is marked as an incipient ridge.

 Minutiae Detection:
I. Level2 features : Level-2 features are matched using a Dynamic Bounding Box algorithm . Due to non-linear deformation property of fingerprints, it is impossible to

exactly recover the position of each input minutiae with respect to its corresponding minutiae in the template. It places a bounding box around each template minutiae, which specifies all the possible positions of the corresponding input minutiae with respect to the template minutiae . Due to a bounding box, this method is capable of tolerating, to some extent, the deformations due to, inexact extraction of minutiae positions and nonlinear deformations.

II. Level3 Features: A minutiae triplet based fingerprint identification algorithm is used for

identifying Level-3 features. The algorithm starts with computing a Delaunay triangle using the minutiae points which can sustain deformations. After the triangulation, fingerprint features are encoded as the indexing parameters.8 parameters are: Average Cosine Angle (A) Triangle Orientation Vector (O) Ridge Curve Parameters (RC) Average Ridge Width (RW) Average Distance of k-Nearest Neighbor Pores (PD) Min-Max Distance between Minutia Points and k-Nearest Neighbor Pores (PM) Dot (D) Incipient Ridges (I)

 For matching the indexing parameters, Mahalanobis distance between each

indexing parameter of the gallery and probe images is computed. Mahalanobis distance between two vectors is defined as, d(v1, v2) = (v1v2) S (v1v2) where, S is the positive definite covariance matrix of v1and v2. Let d(i) be the Mahalanobis distance associated with the individual indexing parameters and i = 1, ..., 8. The indexing score, s, is computed by applying Sum rule to the vector d(i),8i.e., d s = (i )
t 1

i= 1

The indexing scores are sorted in ascending order and top M matches are

retrieved as the possible matches..

Stage-II
Establishing Simultaneity :
Simultaneity is accomplished by SWGFAST guidelines which includes following steps: Analysis of Simultaneous impressions. Comparison of Simultaneous impressions. Evaluation of Simultaneous impressions. Verification of Simultaneous impressions. Documentation of Simultaneous impressions.

Actual Method used :

Let n be the number of fingerprint images in the simultaneous impression

cluster and Mn be the set of top matches for the nth latent impression.
From each set of top matches, a subset, Mc, comprising of common

candidates is identified, i.e. Mc = M1 M2 Mn

These selected candidates are analyzed by the forensic examiner to

ascertain simultaneity based on spatial, frequency, and anatomical features. Once simultaneity is established, all friction ridge impressions of unknown simultaneous impression are compared with each print identified in the subset of common candidates to compute a ranked order of candidates.

Comparison

Experimental Evaluation

Performance

Conclusion
It is compatible with existing fingerprint identification systems because each

friction ridge impression in the cluster is also processed and analyzed individually.

It follows the well established ACE-V methodology to analyze simultaneous

latent fingerprint impressions.

It effectively processes simultaneous impressions even when none of the friction

ridge impressions stand alone so all of them must be compared in aggregate to reach a conclusion.

It reduces the search space and time required to manually attune the closest

match by the forensic examiners.

Challenges which still Remain

To fully automate the process for establishing simultaneity and reliably

extracting level-2 and level-3 features from the latent impressions.

To perform identification even when none of the friction ridge impressions

stand alone and some of them provide only anatomical or spatial information.
To prepare a large database that contains simultaneous latent impressions

from different surfaces with varying quality and quantity.

To perform a scientific statistical study to determine the usefulness and

applicability of simultaneous latent fingerprint impressions.