Dedicated hardware IP module for extracting singular points from fingerprints

In this paper a new digital dedicated hardware IP module for extracting singular points from fingerprints is presented (in particular convex cores). This module comprises four main blocks that implement an image directional extraction, a smoothing process, singular point detection and finally, a post processing to obtain the exact location of the singular point. A Verilog HDL description has been developed for this solution. The description has been synthesized and implemented in FPGAs from Xilinx.