Robust enhancement and centroid-based concealment of fingerprint biometric data into audio signals

Numerous issues are raised through the enhancement, transmission and storage of biometric data due to its high sensitivity and extremely crucial purpose. However, it might be impossible to recover if corrupted, counterfeited or hacked, thereby ruining the general aim of enhancing and securing it. In this paper, an 8-layered feature enhancement algorithm is proposed. The fingerprint image was enhanced and extracted using minutiae-based recognition system with the aim of eliminating all anomalies that comes with the image. The EQF (Effectiveness Quality Factor) and matching accuracy of the system all signifies efficiency and robustness of the enhancement scheme. In the other hand, a centroid-based audio watermarking is used to conceal the enhanced fingerprint biometric data into audio signals. The embedding algorithm starts by encrypting our enhanced image using chaotic logistic map prior to watermarking. It then proceeds with computing the centroid of the audio signal. DWT and DCT are performed on the sub-band which carries the centroid of each audio frame, thereby embedding the encrypted watermark bits into their domain. Achieved results from the performance evaluation of both contributions signify the efficiency of our proposed schemes. Moreover, some signal processing operations are also carried out on the watermarked signal and the outcome was intriguing as they were all counteracted.