A review on fingerprint based authentication-its challenges and applications

In digital era, human authentication and identification mostly relies on biometric traits of an individual. Amongst different biometrics, fingerprint has been playing a crucial role and employing as fundamental evidence due to some of its inherent properties. Moreover, it establishes itself as the strongest verification component in several applications like – court of law, criminal and forensic investigations. In the present study we primarily focus on various application domains of fingerprint based identification systems. We also highlight the different challenges and security threats that the system may encounter during its implementation. The review analyses the state of the art methods with its technical details along with their implementation and security issues which lead to a thematic analysis of the literature. To facilitate a better comprehension towards the system, we also provide a few fundamental knowledge on fingerprint datasets and system performance measures. Finally, the future prospects of fingerprint biometric in the identification system are highlighted.