A Robust Orientation Estimation Algorithm for Low Quality Fingerprints

It is a difficult and challenge task to extract the accurate orientation field for the low quality fingerprints. This paper proposed a robust orientation estimation with feedback algorithm to get the accurate fingerprint orientation. First, the fingerprint image is segmented into recoverable and unrecoverable regions. The following orientation field estimation and orientation correction algorithms were only processed in the recoverable regions. Second, the coarse orientation image is estimated from the input fingerprint image using the gradient-based approach. Then we computed the reliability of orientation from the gradient image. If the reliability of the estimated orientation is less than pre-specified threshold, the orientation will be corrected by the proposed mixed orientation model. The proposed algorithm has been evaluated on the databases of FVC2004. Experimental results confirm that the proposed algorithm is a reliable and effective algorithm for the extraction orientation field of the low quality fingerprints.