Fingerprint enhancement by directional filtering

Abstract

The important step in fingerprint matching is the reliable fingerprint recognition. Automatic fingerprint recognition system relies on the input fingerprint for feature extraction. Hence, the effectiveness of feature extraction relies heavily on the quality of input fingerprint images. In this paper adaptive filtering in frequency domain in order to enhance the fingerprint image is proposed. Enhancement of the original fingerprint image is obtained by histogram equalization of the Gabor filtered image.