Internal fingerprint zone detection in optical coherence tomography fingertip scans

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a high-resolution imaging technology capable of capturing a three-dimensional (3-D) representation of fingertip skin. The papillary junction—a junction layer of skin containing the same topographical features as the surface fingerprint—is contained within this representation. The top edge of the papillary junction contains the topographical information pertinent to the internal fingerprint. Extracting the internal fingerprint from OCT fingertip scans has been shown to be possible. Currently, acquiring the internal fingerprint involves manually defining the region containing it. This manner of definition is inefficient. Perfect knowledge of the location of the papillary junction is hypothesized as achievable. This research details and tests a k -means clustering approach for papillary junction detection. All tested metrics are of a standard comparable to the measured human error. The technique presented in this research is highly successful in detection of the location of the papillary junction. Furthermore, high-quality internal fingerprints are acquired using the coordinates obtained. © 2015 SPIE and IS&T [DOI: 10.1117/1.JEI.24.2.023027]