A Novel Technique for Fingerprint Feature Extraction Using Fixed Size Templates

Extracting minutiae from fingerprint image is one of the most important steps in automatic fingerprint identification and classification. Minutiae are local discontinuities in the fingerprint pattern, mainly ridge ending and bifurcation. A novel approach for extraction of minutiae is attempted through a fixed size template matching process. This approach is simple and efficient than the complicated orientation based template matching methods normally followed in several implementations of feature extraction. The proposed method is based on the use of 3 × 3 fixed size template for feature extraction. Template is applied to the binary image at selected potential location to detect the presence of minutiae at these locations, making the process effective and faster.