SIFT based fingerprint corepoint localization

The detection of singular points (core and delta), accurately and reliably, is very important for classification and matching of fingerprints.This paper presents a new approach for core point detection based on Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) operation. Firstly, SIFT points are extracted, then reliability and ridge frequency criteria are applied to reduce the candidate point required to make a decision on the core point. Finally a suitable mask is applied to detect an accurate core point. Experiments on FVC2002 and FVC2004 database show that our approach locates a unique reference point with high accuracy. Results have been compared with existing methods in terms of accuracy of core point detection. To make the algorithm reliable, a simple point based matching has been implemented.