Error tolerance and privacy enhancement in matching fingerprint templates

Biometric systems attempt to solve a matching problem through live measurements of human body features. However, two obstacles hinder the wider applications of biometrics: non-reproducibility and privacy concerns. In this paper we study fingerprint minutiae-based templates. Our testing results show templates can still match under some step-wised modification and therefore the biometric system can tolerate certain amounts of errors. Our testing results also show that partial fingerprint templates can still match successfully. Therefore, the security and privacy of fingerprint can be protected with these techniques.