A Minutiae Based Fingerprint Matching Algorithm Using Fuzzy Logic

Abstract

The use of biometrics is evolving day by day in our society. Fingerprint recognition is well known for its high acceptability and popularity in the world of biometric systems. Fingerprint recognition has its applications in many fields such as banking, medical and insurance industry, police department, database management systems, identity authentication, police department, border security and many other areas. There are different methods and techniques used for matching fingerprints but the most common and popular approach is minutiae based matching. Our approach is based on structural matching and the matching algorithm presented here is the improved and modified form of [1]. In this method, matching is done on the basis of five closest neighbors of one single minutia that is also called a center minutia. An authentication of minutia is based on these surrounding neighbors. The approach we present here is divided in to two stages, first stage performs initial filtration and the second stage includes special matching criteria that incorporate fuzzy logic as well as a novel feature to select final minutiae for matching score calculation. The method of selecting center point for second stage is also adopted. This algorithm is able to perform well for translated, rotated and stretched fingerprints and does not require any process for alignment before matching. Two error rates (FAR and FRR) are used to represent the performance of an algorithm. Tests have been carried out on the standard database FVC 2002 (DB1_A) using P-IV (1.8MHz) with 512MB of RAM. MALAB 7.0 has been used for the implementation of proposed algorithm. Experimental results show that algorithm is fast, efficient and reliable.