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A minutiae plot illustrating the four types of minutiae pairs. 

A minutiae plot illustrating the four types of minutiae pairs. 

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Most fingerprint-based biometric systems store the minutiae template of a user in the database. It has been traditionally assumed that the minutiae template of a user does not reveal any information about the original fingerprint. In this paper, we challenge this notion and show that three levels of information about the parent fingerprint can be e...

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... Fig. 7 summarizes the main steps in the proposed classification algorithm. A visual analysis of the fingerprint ridge patterns of various classes reveals that they have almost the same ridge structure in the base and marginal areas, as shown in Fig. 8. However, it is the irregularities in the vicinity of the core region that are significant for classification (such as the circular ridge pattern in the case of whorls or the curving back of ridges in loops). In order to select these “salient” minutiae, we attempt to detect a registration point ð R 0 Þ using the Hough transform [3]. The ridges around the core point have a high curvature and form a nearly circular pattern. Accordingly, the orientations of the minutiae in such regions define a nearly circular pattern. Consider a circle ð x À x 0 Þ 2 þ ð y À y 0 Þ 2 1⁄4 r 2 defined by a group of minutiae, as shown in Fig. 9a. Here, x 0 and y 0 are the coordinates of the center of the circle and r is its radius. Our goal here is to detect the center of the circle. It can be observed that the minutiae depicted in Fig. 9a have orientations almost tangential to the circum- ference of the circle. Using this property, for each minutiae m we traverse a line L that is perpendicular to its orientation . This line is viewed as a set of discrete points, as shown in Fig. 9b. These points correspond to the probable center points of the circle. The radius r of each of these circles is the distance between the minutiae and the corresponding center points since the minutia m lies on their circumferences. An accumulator in 3D Hough space corresponding to the center ð x; y Þ and radius r is used to detect the center. For a circular minutiae pattern, there will be a well-pronounced peak in the Hough parameter space corresponding to the center ð x 0 ; y 0 Þ (point marked with red “x” in Fig. 9a). This is the registration point characterized by significant minutiae activity around it. Since the ridge structure in fingerprints is not exactly circular, we use lines that are nearly perpendicular ðÆ 30 Þ to the orientation , as shown in Fig. 9c. The results of the Hough transform using the estimated orientation maps and the minutiae points are shown in Fig. 10. The purpose of this exercise is not to detect the core of the fingerprint; rather, it is to detect a registration point that can be used to extract the “salient” minutiae. Only the minutiae located in a 300  300 pixels region about R 0 are used for classification (Fig. 11). A feature vector is next extracted from the set of salient minutiae identified in the previous stage. The features in this vector capture various properties of the minutiae such as the relationship between minutiae location and orientation, the clustering property of minutiae, the relationship between minutiae pairs, etc. The features we have designed in this regard are invariant to the rotation and translation of fingerprint images. The 11-dimensional feature vector F 1⁄4 f F 1 ; F 2 ; Á Á Á ; F 11 g is constructed as follows. The orientations represented by the minutiae vary across the four classes. For instance, a whorl fingerprint has at least one ridge which traverses a 360 closed path in the central region of the fingerprint. Thus, the orientations of these minutiae range from 0-360 degrees. On the other hand, the minutiae orientations of arches have only two dominant directions. In order to understand the distribution of minutiae orientations for each class, we examine the rose plots of minutiae orientations (Fig. 12). The range of dominant minutiae orientations is captured by counting the number of empty bins in the rose plot (feature F 1 ). This feature effectively discriminates between whorl and arch types, though it may not discriminate between the other classes. Feature F 2 is used to denote the variance in minutiae orientations present in the template. Minutiae pairs are fundamental units for representing variations in fingerprints [32]. The properties of neighboring minutiae change across classes. For instance, the neighboring minutiae in the central region of W have large orientation differences, whereas minutiae neighbors in A have similar orientations. The correlation between spatial location and orientation of minutiae pairs can be examined by estimating the joint distribution of R and È , where R is the distance between two minutiae and È is the difference in their orientation (as shown in (4) to (7)). Let P ð R; È Þ denote the probability of observing a minutiae pair which are separated by a distance R and with difference in orientation È . Then, F 3 is the number of minutiae pairs that are spatially compact and have almost similar orientations; F 4 is the number of pairs that are spatially compact but have a large orientation difference; F 5 is the number of minutiae pairs that are spatially separated and have similar orientations; F 6 is the number of minutiae pairs that are spatially separated but have large differences in orientation. Fig. 13 illustrates these four types of minutiae pairs. In our experiments with the NIST-4 database, we have set R 1 1⁄4 60 pixels , R 2 1⁄4 180 pixels , È 1 1⁄4 30 , and È 2 1⁄4 180 . It is observed that these features are significantly different for the four fingerprint classes. For arches, F 3 takes relatively larger values compared to the other three features, whereas, for whorls, F 4 is typically the largest. Minutiae tend to cluster in certain regions of the fingerprint. For example, minutiae activity increases in the core and delta regions of a fingerprint [21], [32], [8]. Variations in ridge flow seem to contribute to a high incidence of minutiae points. In order to capture these variations across fingerprint classes, we compute the minutiae density in circular regions representing a radii of 50 pixels. Feature F 7 is defined to be the maximum minutiae density corresponding to a particular fingerprint template. The value of F 7 is relatively high for whorls and small for arches. Feature F 8 is the maximum variance in minutiae orientations observed across all the circular regions considered. Visually (Fig. 1), it is apparent that features F 1 to F 8 can possibly distinguish classes A and W , but are not sufficient for reliably resolving ambiguity between classes ( L , R ), ( A , L , R ), and ( L , R , W ). It is necessary to include information about global ridge pattern in conjunction with the local minutiae properties to address this issue. To capture the global ridge structure of the fingerprint, we define geometric kernels which model the shape of the fingerprint around the core region for the W , L , and R classes. In a left loop, the ridges in the core region form a loop by recurving to the left side of the fingerprint. This is captured by a kernel constructed using two semi-ellipses corresponding to the concave and convex portions of the loop. The kernel for R is merely a mirror image of the L kernel. The circular ridge structure of W is captured using a simple circular kernel. Since the marginal area of every fingerprint has arch-like characteristics (Fig. 8), we do not define a separate kernel for the A class as it would align well with fingerprints of all the other classes. See Fig. 14. In order to determine a goodness-of-fit for these kernels, we use a model-based scheme by modifying the hierarchical kernel fitting approach proposed by Jain and Minut [18]. In this approach, fingerprint classification is achieved by finding the kernel that best fits the flow field (i.e, orientation field) of a given fingerprint template. Consider V to be a smooth vector field defined over some region in the plane R 2 and let be its argument. Let be a circular kernel curve in R 2 , as shown in Fig. 15. Let _ be the tangent to and be its argument. Consider a point t 1⁄4 ð x ð t Þ ; y ð t ÞÞ present on the kernel . An energy functional capturing the difference between the direction of _ and that of the vector field V at point is defined by To determine how well each kernel fits the estimated orientation map of the fingerprint, energy values (6) for various discrete points on the kernel are computed. The average of these values is used to determine the goodness of the fit. A lower energy average means a better fitting kernel. For each estimated orientation map (from minutiae information), we find three values for the energy functionals corresponding to the L , R , and W kernels. These functionals form features ( F 9 , F 10 , F 11 ), respectively. For an orientation map corresponding to W , it is expected that the minimum of the three features will be F 11 , whereas, for L and R , the minimum will correspond to F 9 and F 10 , respectively. We observed that, due to the inherent similarity in ridge structure of loops and arches, both the L and R kernels fit well for fingerprints belonging to class A . Thus, F 9 and F 10 are similar-valued for arches. This property is useful for resolving the ambiguity between loops and arches. The class-specific kernels are defined with respect to the registration point, R 0 , obtained using the Hough transform, i.e., for the W kernel, R 0 is the center of the circle, whereas, for the L and R kernels, R 0 is the focus of the elliptical kernel. The rotation and translation of fingerprints are taken into account by subjecting these kernels to certain predefined transformations prior to applying them. For W , the radius of the kernel is varied between 100 to 160 pixels. For L and R , the semi-major axis is varied between 120 to 180, while the semi-minor axis is varied between 60 to 100 pixels. The angle that the ellipse subtends with the horizontal is varied between À 10 to 10 degrees. Further, the kernels are moved in a 20  20 window around R 0 . The features ( F 9 , F 10 , F 11 ) correspond to the minimum of the energy functional obtained across all transformations for each kernel. A K -nearest neighbor classifier employing the Manhattan distance was used to ...

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... 4. Cross-matching can be used to track individuals without their consent. To protect biometric template databases from being compromised for supporting widespread use of biometric based authentication is an important research challenge and a critical step in the successful implementation of a BIMS [8]. Every effective BIMS must satisfy some basic security and privacy requirements: ...
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Rapid development of automation in the day-to-day life activity marks up the need of securing bio-metric template and the privacy of rightful owner. Minutiae-based matching is the most popular in the fingerprint recognition system, which greatly suffers from non-linear distortion like translation and rotation. To deal with linear distortion most of the technique proposed in the literature depends upon a reference or singular point. The paper proposes a binary template generation technique which applies an unsupervised clustering technique without fixing the number of clusters. Instead of position and orientation of the minutiae points the cardinality of the clusters are stored and converted into binary template. No spatial pattern information about the fingerprint is stored in the template to protect it from spoofing and information leakage. By the help of modified Radial Basis Function Network (mRBFN) with robust and efficient matching technique the generated templates are matched for authentication. We use MCYT dataset for training the mRBFN. The efficiency of the proposed scheme is evaluated on FVC 2000, FVC 2002 and FVC 2004 dataset.
... Reconstructing fingerprints from the minutiae templates or the inversion of fingerprint templates was initially addressed in 2001 [35]. However, intensive research in this area started in 2007 by [36,37]. Regarding the model-based approaches, the process is technically similar to fingerprint synthesis with the only difference being that singularity points and the orientation map are estimated from minutiae and not vice versa. ...
... The final rendering step enhances realism. In [37], a fingerprint image is generated from a skeleton image, which is reconstructed from minutiae. The process involves estimating an orientation map using minutiae triplets and drawing streamlines starting from minutiae and border points. ...
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... It is also worth observing that, for an attacker, collecting the templates stored in a database could be as effective as acquiring the original biometric data. In fact, it has been shown for several biometric identifiers that the original biometric traits can be adequately reconstructed from their representations, namely the templates [28], and that such reverse process can be also performed when the employed features are obtained through the use of neural networks [20]. ...
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... In [32], it is shown how ridge orientations can be modeled by fitting Legendre polynomials. [30] Realistic fingerprint synthesis based on [31] Statistical ridge pattern model Ram et al. '10 [32] Estimation of ridge orientation Modelling ridges by Legendre polynomials Johnson et al. '13 [33] Texture mapping from real to master fingerprint Modeling of ridge texture & valley noise features Drahansky '19 [34] Simulation of sensor, environment, user and Modeling of synthesis states based on Petri net finger conditions, skin diseases Priesnitz et al. '22 [35] Synthesis of contactless fingerprints Simulation of capturing process, subject characteristics, and environmental influences Fingerprint reconstruction from minutiae Cappelli et al. '07 [36] Fingerprint reconstruction Orientation from zero-pole model Ross et al. '07 [37] Partial fingerprints reconstruction Orientation from minutiae triplets Feng and Jain '11 [38] Fingerprint reconstruction Orientation from AM-FM model Li and Kot '12 [39] Fingerprint reconstruction Orientation from AM-FM model Cao and Jain '15 [40] Idealistic ridge patterns (no noise) Patch dictionaries for orient. & continuous phase Face synthesis Sirovich and Kirby '87 [41] Face as a linear combination of eigenpictures Principal component analysis (PCA) for faces Applied to face recognition in [42] -Eigenfaces Software tools: EVOFIT, E-Fit V Cootes '01 [43] Active Appearance Model PCA on texture + PCA on facial landmarks Blanz and Vetter '99 [44] Morphable 3D Face Model PCA on texture + PCA on 3D face model Software Tool: FaceGen Kähler et al. '02 [45] Deformable head model with anatomical Modeling musculature and skeletal structure structure Iris synthesis Lefohn et al. '03 [46] Ocularist's model Stacking layers: stroma, collarette, sphincter, etc. Cui et al. '04 [47] Iris synthesis PCA + super-resolution Makthal and Ross '05 [48] Iris texture synthesis Markov random field (MRF) model Shah and Ross '06 [49] Realistic iris synthesis MRF model for background texture + embedding radial and concentric furrows, collarette and crypts Zuo et al. '07 [50] Compilation of large-scale synthetic iris datasets Anatomy based model Iris reconstruction from binary IrisCode Venugopalan et al. '11 [51] Iris reconstruction Deterministic approach based on Gabor filtering Galbally et al. '13 [52] Iris reconstruction Probabilistic approach based on genetic algorithms Synthesis of vascular samples Crisan et al. '08 [53] Realistic hand vein samples Vein nodes are connected by randomly driven vessel growth and imaging variation modelling Hillerström et al. '14 [54] Realistic finger vein samples Vein nodes are connected by randomly driven vessel growth and imaging variation modelling Fiorini et al. '14 [55] Realistic retina (fundus) samples Patch-based approach to create texture Bonaldi et al. '16 [56] Active shapes and Kalman filtering for vessels Das et al. '17 [57] Realistic sclera patterns Non-parametric texture synthesis ...
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... The corresponding relationship between minutiae is established by considering the similarity of minutiae descriptors, and then fingerprint comparison is performed. To improve the identification performance, many papers combine fingerprint minutiae points with other key information [30,31] as the feature representation of fingerprints, and then measure the similarity between them. Lee et al. [32] add the ridge feature to the traditional detail feature identification, and the final identification score is the combination of the two identification stages. ...
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... Despite the fact that the usage of biometrics has made a remarkable breakthrough in the area of security, its unprotected use can open the flood gates to significant security and privacy concerns. One of the considerable risks in this regard is the permanent loss of the user's identity [9,12,35]. To mitigate these challenges, biometric template protection schemes have been employed. ...
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