Separable Gabor filter realization for fast fingerprint enhancement

Since 2-D Gabor filter can be separated into 1-D Gaussian band-pass filter and 1-D low-pass filter to the perpendicular, separable Gabor filter realization for any selected orientation is introduced for fast fingerprint enhancement. The experimental results showed that the separable Gabor enhancement significantly reduced computational complexity, approximately 1:2.8 times, faster than traditional Gabor enhancement, with comparable enhancement quality. Moreover, this separable Gabor filter is generalized for any desired orientation resulting in faster execution time (1:1.46), less memory space, and better quality enhancement comparing to the traditional Gabor filter with 8 orientations.