A survey of fingerprint classification Part II: Experimental analysis and ensemble proposal

An effective fingerprint orientation field estimation method using differential values of grayscale intensity

Fingerprint orientation field (OF) estimation is important for basic fingerprint image processing and impacts the accuracy of fingerprint image enhancements, such as Gabor filters. In this article, we introduce an OF estimation algorithm based on differential values of grayscale intensity and examine the accuracy and reliability of the proposed algorithm by applying it to fingerprint images processed using Gaussian blurring and the Gaussian white noise process. The experimental results indicate that the OF estimation reliability of the proposed algorithm is higher than the gradient-based method and the power spectral density (PSD) based method in low quality fingerprints. The proposed algorithm is especially useful in noisy fingerprint images, where the OF estimation reliability of the algorithm is 6.46% and 32.93% higher than the gradient-based method and the PSD-based method, respectively.

Automatic Fingerprint Classification Using Deep Learning Technology (DeepFKTNet)

Fingerprints are gaining in popularity, and fingerprint datasets are becoming increasingly large. They are often captured utilizing a variety of sensors embedded in smart devices such as mobile phones and personal computers. One of the primary issues with fingerprint recognition systems is their high processing complexity, which is exacerbated when they are gathered using several sensors. One way to address this issue is to categorize fingerprints in a database to condense the search space. Deep learning is effective in designing robust fingerprint classification methods. However, designing the architecture of a CNN model is a laborious and time-consuming task. We proposed a technique for automatically determining the architecture of a CNN model adaptive to fingerprint classification; it automatically determines the number of filters and the layers using Fukunaga–Koontz transform and the ratio of the between-class scatter to within-class scatter. It helps to design lightweight CNN models, which are efficient and speed up the fingerprint recognition process. The method was evaluated two public-domain benchmark datasets FingerPass and FVC2004 benchmark datasets, which contain noisy, low-quality fingerprints obtained using live scan devices and cross-sensor fingerprints. The designed models outperform the well-known pre-trained models and the state-of-the-art fingerprint classification techniques.

Fingerprint Classification through Standard and Weighted Extreme Learning Machines

Fingerprint classification is a stage of biometric identification systems that aims to group fingerprints and reduce search times and computational complexity in the databases of fingerprints. The most recent works on this problem propose methods based on deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) by adopting fingerprint images as inputs. These networks have achieved high classification performances, but with a high computational cost in the network training process, even by using high-performance computing techniques. In this paper, we introduce a novel fingerprint classification approach based on feature extractor models, and basic and modified extreme learning machines (ELMs), being the first time that this approach is adopted. The weighted ELMs naturally address the problem of unbalanced data, such as fingerprint databases. Some of the best and most recent extractors (Capelli02, Hong08, and Liu10), which are based on the most relevant visual characteristics of the fingerprint image, are considered. Considering the unbalanced classes for fingerprint identification schemes, we optimize the ELMs (standard, original weighted, and decay weighted) in terms of the geometric mean by estimating their hyper-parameters (regularization parameter, number of hidden neurons, and decay parameter). At the same time, the classic accuracy and penetration-rate metrics are computed for comparison purposes with the superior CNN-based methods reported in the literature. The experimental results show that weighted ELM with the presence of the golden-ratio in the weighted matrix (W-ELM2) overall outperforms the rest of the ELMs. The combination of the Hong08 extractor and W-ELM2 competes with CNNs in terms of the fingerprint classification efficacy, but the ELMs-based methods have been demonstrated their extremely fast training speeds in any context.