Fingerprint matching with minutiae quality score

The accuracy of minutiae based fingerprint matching relies much on the minutiae extraction process. However, during minutiae extraction, false minutiae may be extracted due to bad fingerprint image quality. One commonly used solution to this problem is to filter out the false minutiae using minutiae quality scores. However, as indicated by the fingerprint matching results, the reliabilities of the existing minutiae scoring algorithms in discriminating genuine and false minutiae are significantly lower than that of the fingerprint matching process. To study the actual difficulties in minutiae filtering, we have conducted extensive experiments to compare two minutiae quality scoring algorithms. Then, four fingerprint matching strategies using minutiae quality scores were employed to investigate how the minutiae quality scores can affect fingerprint matching accuracy. Our results show that only proper combinations of minutiae quality scoring algorithms and fingerprint matching strategies can achieve improvement in fingerprint matching accuracy.