A novel mapping for fingerprint image enhancement

Human fingerprints contain ridges and valleys which to gather forms distinctive patterns. These details are called minutiae, which permanent throughout whole lifetime, and then can be used as identification marks for fingerprint verification. Fingerprint image may have a poor quality that couldn't use directly for recognition processes and then must be pre-processed first. This paper proposes a novel mapping which can be used instead of traditional pre-processing algorithms. The proposed mapping changes the overall fingerprint image configuration and mappes it to another image which is more convenience for common recognition steps. This algorithm is tested over FVC2002 fingerprint database and the results were satisfying. © 2010 IEEE.