Real time fingerprint identification

The pattern matching for fingerprints requires a large amount of data and computation time. Practical fingerprint identification systems require minimal errors and ultrafast processing time to perform real time verification and identification. By utilizing the two-dimensional processing capability, fast processing speed and non-interfering communication of optical processing techniques, such extremely fast real time fingerprint identification systems can be implemented. Among the various pattern matching systems, the joint transform correlator (JTC) has been found to be inherently suitable for real time matching applications. Among the various JTCs the fringe-adjusted JTC has been found to yield significantly better correlation output compared to alternate JTCs. In this paper, a fingerprint identification system has been developed based on the fringe-adjusted JTC. Since all pattern matching systems suffer from high sensitivity to distortions, the synthetic discriminant function concept has been incorporated in fringe-adjusted JTC to ensure distortion-invariant fingerprint identification.