A New Fingerprint Thinning Algorithm

Fingerprint thinning is a critical step in fingerprint identification system, and it's also the last step of preprocessing. The performance of a minutiae extraction algorithm relies heavily on the quality of the thinning algorithm. Moreover, the efficiency of the algorithm is a crucial factor in real-time identification system. A new thinning algorithm for fingerprint image which based on directional image is proposed in this paper. The algorithm needs no iteration. It's fast to implement and the thinning result is single pixel wide and with one pixel precision width around the center line. Experimental results proved that the proposed algorithm is both fast and accurate.