A deformable model for fingerprint matching

The process of automatic fingerprint matching is affected by the nonlinear deformation introduced in the image during fingerprint sensing. Given several template impressions of a finger, we estimate the “average” deformation of each template impression by comparing it with the rest of the impressions of that finger. The average deformation is developed using the thin plate spline (TPS) model and is based on minutia point correspondences between pairs of fingerprint impressions. The estimated average deformation is utilized to pre-distort the minutiae points in the template image before matching it with the minutiae points in the query image. We show that the use of an average deformation model leads to a better alignment between the template and query minutiae points. An index of deformation is proposed for choosing the deformation model with the least variability arising from a set of template impressions corresponding to a finger. Our experimental data consists of 1600 fingerprints corresponding to 50 different fingers collected over a period of 2 weeks. It is shown that the average deformation model leads to an improvement in the alignment between impressions originating from the same finger.