Full 3D touchless fingerprint recognition: Sensor, database and baseline performance

One of the fields that still today remains largely unexplored in biometrics is 3D fingerprint recognition. This gap is mainly explained by the lack of scanners capable of acquiring on a touchless, fast, reliable and repeatable way, accurate fingerprint 3D spatial models. As such, full 3D fingerprint data with which to produce research and advance this field is almost nonexistent. If such acquisition process was possible, it could represent the beginning of a real paradigm shift in the way fingerprint recognition is performed. The present paper is a first promising step to address the fascinating challenge of 3D fingerprint acquisition and recognition. It presents a new full 3D touchless fingerprint scanner, a new database with 1,000 3D finger-print models, a new segmentation method based on the additional spatial information provided by the models, and initial baseline verification results.