Fingerprint Matching for Noisy and Distorted Patterns Using a Siamese Network With ResNet50 and Multihead Attention

Dermatoglyphics, the study of unique ridge patterns on fingertips, plays a crucial role in fingerprint-based identification. However, skin conditions such as psoriasis, eczema, and verruca vulgaris can distort these patterns. This distortion creates challenges for fingerprint matching systems in forensic science and biometric authentication. This paper proposes a Siamese network with a modified ResNet50 architecture and multihead attention mechanisms to improve fingerprint matching under such distortions. The Siamese network enables the system to compare fingerprint pairs effectively, even under distortions. The modified ResNet50 architecture captures intricate ridge patterns, while the multihead attention mechanisms focus on critical fingerprint regions. Overall, the proposed approach enhances the system’s ability to learn discriminative features. As a result, it can effectively differentiate between matched and unmatched fingerprint pairs, even in the presence of moderate to extreme noise. The proposed system was trained on the Sokoto coventry fingerprint dataset (SOCOFing) and a custom dataset. Experimental results demonstrate high accuracy, with the system achieving 99.47% accuracy under low noise conditions and 90% under moderate noise. However, performance declined to 55.56% under extreme distortions. A comparative analysis highlighted the superiority of the proposed system over widely used minutiae-based methods. The latter exhibited a significant drop in matching scores, falling below 15% for highly distorted fingerprints. These findings underscore the limitations of traditional fingerprint recognition techniques and highlight the effectiveness of proposed approach in handling dermatoglyphic distortions.