Linkages between Biometrics and Forensic Science

In a fingerprint image processing system for use in processing a fingerprint image prior to identification of a fingerprint, edition or correction is made by adding true minutiae and/or deleting false minutiae from the fingerprint image displayed on an output device to leave only real minutiae and to formulate a minutia list which registers a location of each minutia, a minutia direction, and minutia relations representative of adjacent minutia pairs. Edition of the minutiae may be carried out by handling the minutiae as an image while correction may be made by recognizing the minutiae as data. Ridge numbers between two adjacent ones of the minutiae are included in the minutia relations and may be manually or automatically extracted from the fingerprint image.

Fingerprint image processing system capable of simply processing minutiae

This paper presents an enhanced user interface, "fingerprint user interface (FpUI)", that exploits fingerprint identification technology, and discusses its application to information systems, specifically to a mobile authentication terminal for networked services and digital appliances. FpUI utilizes information regarding not only who put a finger on its sensor but which specific finger it was. A user can assign commands, data objects, status, or personalized settings to individual fingers for user-friendly direct manipulation. A mobile terminal, "pocket-PID", with fast, accurate fingerprint identification capability is proposed which features: an easy-to-use FpUI, high security, and secure and usable non-contact communication capability which facilitates implementation of networked services based on biometric user identification.

Fingerprint-based user-friendly interface and pocket-PID for mobile authentication

Document Title: The Report of the International Association for Identification, Standardization II Committee

To provide a stripe pattern matching system enabling to verify minutia correspondence between a searching stripe pattern and a filed stripe pattern independent of position or direction of the searching stripe pattern, correspondence value between them is evaluated by comparing their distances, directions or relations to their each neighboring minutiae by a pairing examination means (16). The most appropriate rotation angle and the most appropriate shifting coordinates for adjusting the searching stripe pattern to the filed stripe pattern is obtained by selecting a most appropriate axial candidate giving the most concentrated coordinate deviations referring to deviation distributions of correspondence values accumulated on a deviation plane memory (18) by applying each axial candidate as the coordinate adjustment reference. Therefore, the most appropriate coordinate adjustment can be performed even when either or both of absolute direction and position cannot be specified, in the invention.

A stripe pattern matching system

The present system for identifying latent fingerprints left at the scene of a crime still depends on the skill and patience of trained fingerprint technicians because of the low quality of the latent fingerprints. An image processing & feature extraction technique has been established in order to detect minutiae (ridge endings and ridge bifurcations and ridge counts useful for latent fingerprint identification. The algorithm of the latent fingerprint identification using these features has been evaluated. Each feature is detected from the gray scale image of fingerprints and described by minutiae positions, minutiae directions and interminutia ridge counts. In the latent fingerprint identification, minutiae pairs are selected according to the similarity between latent fingerprints' features and registered fingerprints' features in a file. The similarity between two fingerprints is obtained through the comparison of selected minutiae pairs. In our experiments, we attempted the feature extraction of 500 registered fingerprints and 200 latent fingerprints, and the matching between them. The experiments were carried out using a high speed microcomputer, a flying spot scanner, a color display, and a tablet unit, which con-nected with a general purpose computer system (NEAC 2200/200).

Y. Hoshino

Papers

Automatic Fingerprint Identification