A robust algorithm for fingerprint singular point detection and image reference direction determination based on the analysis of curvature map

A novel fingerprint singular point (SP) detection algorithm is proposed in this paper based on the analysis of curvature maps computed from fingerprint images. And a fingerprint image reference direction (FIRD) is defined and computed using curvature map and orientation field. Because each fingerprint image owns one and only on FIRD, FIRD can be used as the reference frame orientation when performing fingerprint match. A series of experiments are done on a public domain collection of fingerprint images, Set B (training database) of DB3 in FVC2002, to evaluate our method proposed here. The results demonstrate the good accuracy and efficiency of the algorithm in this paper.