Implementation of Minutiae Based Fingerprint Identification System using Crossing Number Concept

Biometric system is essentially a pattern recognition system which recognizes a person by determining the authenticity of a specific physiological (e.g., fingerprints, face, retina, iris) or behavioral (e.g., gait, signature) characteristic possessed by that person. Among all the presently employed biometric techniques, fingerprint identification systems have received the most attention due to the long history of fingerprints and its extensive use in forensics. Fingerprint is reliable biometric characteristic as it is unique and persistence. Fingerprint is the pattern of ridges and valleys on the surface of fingertip. However, recognizing fingerprints in poor quality images is still a very complex job, so the fingerprint image must be preprocessed before matching. It is very difficult to extract fingerprint features directly from gray scale fingerprint image. In this paper we have proposed the system which uses minutiae based matching algorithm for fingerprint identification. There are three main phases in proposed algorithm. First phase enhance the input fingerprint image by preprocessing it. The enhanced fingerprint image is converted into thinned binary image and then minutiae are extracted by using Crossing Number Concept (CN) in second phase. Third stage compares input fingerprint image (after preprocessing and minutiae extraction) with fingerprint images enrolled in database and makes decision whether the input fingerprint is matched with the fingerprint stored in database or not.