Effect of human-biometric sensor interaction on fingerprint matching performance, image quality and minutiae count

This study investigated the effect of force levels (3, 5, 7, 9 and 11N) on fingerprint matching performance, image quality scores and minutiae count between optical and capacitance sensors. Three images were collected from the right index fingers of 75 participants for each sensing technology. Descriptive statistics analysis of variance and Kruskal-Wallis non-parametric tests were conducted to assess significant differences in minutiae counts and image quality scores, by force level. The results reveal a significant difference in image quality score by force level and sensor technology in contrast to minutiae count for the capacitance sensor. The image quality score is one of the many factors that influence the system matching performance, yet the removal of low quality images does not improve the system performance at each force level. Further research is needed to identify other manipulatable factors to improve the interaction between a user and device and the subsequent matching performance.