FINGERPRINT IMAGE ENHANCEMENT ALGORITHM BASED ON WAVELET FILTERS

1Faculty of Engineering – Al Azhar University – Qena,

2Faculty of Engineering – Minia University,

There are many human biometric features that can be used to confirm the identity, such as

voice, hand geometry, face, retinal pattern of eyes, and fingerprints. Fingerprints have long

been used as a reliable biometric feature for personal identification. An automatic fingerprint

identification system (AFIS) is based on matching of minutia details of ridge/valley structures

of fingerprints. The AFIS matching performance relies heavily on the quality of the input

fingerprint image. In order to ensure that the performance of AFIS is robust with respect to

the quality of input fingerprint images, it is necessary to incorporate a fingerprint

enhancement module in the AFIS system.

In this paper, we propose an effective algorithm of fingerprint image enhancement, which can

much improve the clarity and continuity of the ridge structure based on wavelet transform.

The introduced algorithm not only enhances the image but also gives a good binary

fingerprint image. Good binary image increases the AFIS performance and accuracy.

Simulation results are included illustrating the capability of proposed algorithm to enhance

the ridge and valley structure of the fingerprint image.