Individuality of Fingerprints: Comparison of Models and Measurements

Over a hundred years, several attempts have been made to quantitatively establish the degree of individuality of fingerprints. Measurements have been made using models based on grids, ridges, fixed probabilities, relative measurements and generative distributions. This paper is a survey and assessment of various fingerprint individuality models proposed to-date. Models starting from that of Galton to recently proposed generative models are described. The models are described in terms of their attributes, similarities and differences. A detailed discussion of generative models for fingerprints, which are based on modeling the distributions of fingerprint features from a database, is given. Generative models with and without ridge information are compared. The probabilities of random correspondence arrived at by all the models are summarized. Finally, recent studies of fingerprints of twins, which strengthen the individuality argument, are discussed.