On matching latent to latent fingerprints

Abstract

This research presents a forensics application of matching two latent fingerprints. In crime scene settings, it is often required to match multiple latent fingerprints. Unlike matching latent with inked or live fingerprints, this research problem is very challenging and requires proper analysis and attention. The contribution of this paper is three fold: (i) a comparative analysis of existing algorithms is presented for this application, (ii) fusion and context switching frameworks are presented to improve the identification performance, and (iii) a multi-latent fingerprint database is prepared. The experiments highlight the need for improved feature extraction and processing methods and exhibit large scope of improvement in this important research problem.