Template ageing and quality analysis in time-span separated fingerprint data

We confirm earlier findings on the existence of significant fingerprint template ageing on a dataset acquired with commercial off-the-shelf optical fingerprint sensors exhibiting a time-span of 4 years using two different minutiae-based recognition schemes. A subsequent analysis of the quality of imprints involved in false matches (type 1 and type 2 errors, respectively) does not give clear evidence that reduced quality of time-separated data can be made responsible for the observed template ageing effects. Thus, the cause for the observed template ageing remains unclear and is subject to further investigation.