Fingerprint center point location using directional field

This paper presents a reliable fingerprint center point (CP) location algorithm for the alignment of fingerprints to construct a shift invariant fingerprint recognition system. The proposed algorithm is based on alteration tracking (AT) and CP estimation (CPE). AT is proposed to extract a track that records the transition from one quantized direction to another. CPE is aimed to find the bending point with highest transition of direction from the transition track. This algorithm is tested against fingerprints captured from SAGEM MSO100 optical scanner and the second database from University of Bologna. Experimental result shows that the proposed algorithm is capable of reliably locating fingerprint CP.