Biometrics - News and views on biometric technology.

Fingerprint Biometrics

A fingerprint consists of a unique pattern of ridges and valleys on the surface of one’s finger.  The ridges form ‘minutia’ points: ridge endings and ridge bifucractions (splitting).  There are a variety of naturally occurring minutiae, including small ridges known as dots, slightly larger isolated ridges called islands, empty spaces between temporary ridge diversions known as ponds, bridges, crossovers, and more.

Fingerprint Biometrics

 

The uniqueness of a fingerprint can be determined by the pattern of ridges and furrows as well as the minutiae points. There are five basic fingerprint patterns: arch, tented arch, left loop, right loop and whorl. Loops make up 60% of all fingerprints, whorls account for 30%, and arches for 10%.

Fingerprints are unique; that is, no two are the same, not even in twins.

For fingerprint recognition and fingerprint biometrics, an image of the fingerprint must be taken using either optical, silicon or ultrasound-based technologies.

  • Minutia matching compares specific details within the fingerprint ridges. At registration (also called enrollment), the minutia points are located, together with their relative positions to each other and their directions. At the matching stage, the fingerprint image is processed to extract its minutia points, which are then compared with the registered template.
  • Pattern matching compares the overall characteristics of the fingerprints, not only individual points. Fingerprint characteristics can include sub-areas of certain interest including ridge thickness, curvature, or density. During enrollment, small sections of the fingerprint and their relative distances are extracted from the fingerprint. Areas of interest are the area around a minutia point, areas with low curvature radius, and areas with unusual combinations of ridges.

Some benefits of fingerprint biometrics are cost, ease of use, size, power requirements, non-intrusivity, and the large existing amounts of fingerprint data already held around the world.

Common applications of fingerprint sensors can be seen in various types of consumer electronics, including cell phones, laptops and USB flash drives.  The size, cost and power requirement of fingerprint biometrics means it is a viable solution for these devices.  Other applications exist in time and attendance, physical access control, law enforcement and more.