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Master Thesis - Department of Computer Science

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according to the local orientation <strong>of</strong> the ridge pattern. From a mathematical point<br />

<strong>of</strong> view, a ridge line is defined as a set <strong>of</strong> points that are local maxima relative to<br />

a section orthogonal to the ridge direction. By connecting the consecutive maxima,<br />

polygonal approximation <strong>of</strong> the ridge line can be obtained.<br />

2.2.3 Fingerprint Matching<br />

A fingerprint matching algorithm compares two given fingerprints and returns either<br />

a degree <strong>of</strong> similarity (without loss <strong>of</strong> generality, a score between 0 and 1) or binary<br />

decision (matched/non-matched). Matching fingerprint images is an extremely diffi-<br />

cult problem, mainly due to the large variability in different impressions <strong>of</strong> the same<br />

finger (i.e. large intra-class variations). The main factors responsible for intra-class<br />

variations are:<br />

• Displacement<br />

• Rotation<br />

• Partial overlap<br />

• Non-linear distortion<br />

• Pressure and skin condition<br />

• Noise<br />

The large number <strong>of</strong> approaches to fingerprint matching can be coarsely classified into<br />

three families: 1) Correlation-based, 2) Minutiae-based and 3) Ridge feature-based.<br />

In pattern recognition literature, the minutiae matching problem has been generally<br />

addressed as point pattern matching problem. Even though a small difference exists<br />

due to the presence <strong>of</strong> a direction associated with each minutia point, the two problems<br />

may be approached analogously. For point pattern matching there are a family <strong>of</strong><br />

approaches: relaxation methods, algebraic and operational research solutions, tree-<br />

pruning approaches, energy-minimization methods, Hough transforms, and so on.<br />

The relaxation approach [104, 99] iteratively adjusts the confidence level <strong>of</strong> each<br />

corresponding pair <strong>of</strong> points based on its consistency with other pairs until a certain<br />

criterion is satisfied. Hong and Tan [47], and Sprinzak and Werman [116] proposed<br />

31

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