Fingerprint classification by combination of flat and structural approaches

Abstract

This paper investigates the advantages of the combination of flat and structural approaches for fingerprint classification. A novel structural classification method is described and compared with the multichannel flat method recently proposed by Jain et al. [1]. Performances and complementarity of the two methods are evaluated using NIST-4 Database. A simple approach based on the concept of metaclassification is proposed for the combination of the two fingerprint classification methods. Reported results point out the potential advantages of the combination of flat and structural fingerprint-classification approaches. In particular, such results show that the exploitation of structural information allows increasing classification performances. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2001.