A new fingerprint matching method based on ridge tracing

At present, the research on automatic fingerprint identification system (AFIS) is mainly focused on three parts: image enhancement, fingerprint classification and minutiae matching. Fingerprint matching is the key to the whole system and effects on the accuracy and efficiency of the whole system directly. In this paper, a new minutia matching method based on ridge tracing is proposed. When a minutia has been found, we trace the ridges where the minutia is on and search in a range to check if there are any other minutiae on the same ridges. This new method takes the relationship between minutiae on the same ridge into consideration for the first time and makes it more efficient to find a true reference point. As the experimental result, this method is more accurate and robust than the common minutia matching methods.