Internal Fingerprint Identification With Optical Coherence Tomography

Existing biometric fingerprint devices show numerous reliability problems such as wet or fake fingers. In this letter, a secured method using the internal structures of the finger (papillary layer) for fingerprint identification is presented. With a frequency-domain optical coherence tomography (FD-OCT) system, a 3-D image of a finger is acquired and the information of the internal fingerprint extracted. The right index fingers of 51 individuals were recorded three times. Using a commercial fingerprint identification program, 95% of internal fingerprint images were successfully recognized. These results demonstrate that OCT imaging of internal fingerprints can be used for accurate and reliable fingerprint recognition.