Hybrid approach to enhancing fingerprint images using filters in the frequency domain

Automatic fingerprint recognition has received considerable attention over the past decades as fingerprint is one of the most popular and successful methods used for personal identification. In this paper, a method based on the combination of Fast Fourier transform (FFT) and Gaussian Bandpass Filter is proposed to enhance fingerprint image. Various filters directly generated in the frequency domain have been used and their outcomes are analyzed in order to determine the best filter that can be applied to fingerprint images for enhancement to have better match accuracies. Experiments are conducted on sample fingerprint images that have been collected using an optical fingerprint Reader and its results show the desirable features of the proposed approach.