Finger-Vein Image Enhancement Based on Combination of Gray-Level Grouping and Circular Gabor Filter

As a newly emergent biometric technology, finger-vein recognition has attracted more attentions in personal identification. Generally, finger-vein images have low contrast and uneven illumination due to finger-vein imaging manner and finger-shape variation. So, finger-vein enhancement is indispensable for reliable finger-vein network extraction. This paper proposes a new method based on combination of gray-level grouping (GLG) and circular Gabor filter (CGF) for finger-vein image enhancement. First, GLG is used to reduce illumination fluctuation and improve the contrast of finger-vein images. Then a circular Gabor filter is used to further strengthen vein ridges in images. The experimental results show that this proposed method is capable of enhancing finger-vein image effectively.