A multichannel approach to fingerprint classification

Fingerprint classification provides an important indexing mechanism in a fingerprint database. An accurate and consistent classification can greatly reduce fingerprint matching time for a large database. We present a fingerprint classification algorithm which is able to achieve an accuracy better than previously reported in the literature. We classify fingerprints into five categories: whorl, right loop, left loop, arch, and tented arch. The algorithm uses a novel representation (FingerCode) and is based on a two-stage classifier to make a classification. It has been tested on 4,000 images in the NIST-4 database. For the five-class problem, a classification accuracy of 90 percent is achieved (with a 1.8 percent rejection during the feature extraction phase). For the four-class problem (arch and tented arch combined into one class), we are able to achieve a classification accuracy of 94.8 percent (with 1.8 percent rejection). By incorporating a reject option at the classifier, the classification accuracy can be increased to 96 percent for the five-class classification task, and to 97.8 percent for the four-class classification task after a total of 32.5 percent of the images are rejected.