Pre-registration for Improved Latent Fingerprint Identification

Comparing a latent fingerprint minutiae set against a ten print fingerprint minutiae set using an automated fingerprint identification system is a challenging problem. This is mainly because latent fingerprints obtained from crime scenes are mostly partial fingerprints, and most automated systems expect approximately the same number of minutiae between query and the reference fingerprint under comparison for good performance. In this work, we propose a methodology to reduce the minutiae set of ten print with respect to that of query latent minutiae set by registering the orientation field of latent fingerprint with the ten print orientation field. By reducing the search space of minutiae from the ten print, we can improve the performance of automated identification systems for latent fingerprints. We report the performance of our registration algorithm on the NIST-SD27 database as well as the improvement in the Rank Identification accuracy of a standard minutiae-based automated system.