Image enhancement for fingerprint recognition using Otsu’s method

Abstract

The internal surfaces of human hands and feet of have minute ridges with furrows between each ridge. Fingerprints have very distinctive features and have been used over a long period of time for the identification of individuals and are now considered to be a very good authentication system for biometric identification. For successful authentication of fingerprint, features must be extracted properly. The different types of fingerprint enhancement algorithms used in image processing all provide different performance results depending on external and internal conditions. External conditions include types of sensors and pressure applied by the subject etc. Internal conditions include the body temperature of a subject and skin quality etc. In this paper, we enhance an image using Otsu’s method, which is one of the segmentation steps of image processing. This algorithm can improve the clarity of ridges and furrows of a fingerprint and enhances performance by reducing the total time for extraction of minutiae compare to other algorithms.