TY - GEN
T1 - On the spatial inhomogeneity of fingerprint minutiae
T2 - 8th IAPR International Conference on Biometrics, ICB 2015
AU - Li, Shuiwang
AU - WANG, Yi
AU - Zhao, Qijun
AU - Zhang, Yi
N1 - Funding information:
This work is supported by the HKBU Strategic Development Fund, Hong Kong Research Grant Council (HKBU12202214), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61403324, No. 61202161). The authors thank all the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Publisher copyright:
© 2015, IEEE
PY - 2015/6/29
Y1 - 2015/6/29
N2 - Fingerprint minutiae distribution plays a critical role in studies such as fingerprint individuality for strengthening the scientific validity of fingerprint evidence and generating synthetic fingerprints for large-scale system evaluations. Fingerprint minutiae are not uniformly distributed as once assumed. Spatial inhomogeneity has been found in minutiae distribution, yet it is not clear what underlies the pattern and affects the random process. In this paper, we quantitatively study the spatial inhomogeneity of minutiae distribution with respect to the level-1 features of singular points and ridge orientation field. We propose a minutiae intensity function to measure the spatial inhomogeneity and a kernel regression model to characterize the relationship between minutiae intensity and the level-1 features. Our statistical experiments on benchmark fingerprint databases show that: 1) the examined level-1 features partially explain regular variation of minutiae spatial distribution; 2) there remain significant fraction of variations unexplained, suggesting additional propositions. These results provide better understanding of the experiential probability of a random correspondence for fingerprint minutiae distribution modelling.
AB - Fingerprint minutiae distribution plays a critical role in studies such as fingerprint individuality for strengthening the scientific validity of fingerprint evidence and generating synthetic fingerprints for large-scale system evaluations. Fingerprint minutiae are not uniformly distributed as once assumed. Spatial inhomogeneity has been found in minutiae distribution, yet it is not clear what underlies the pattern and affects the random process. In this paper, we quantitatively study the spatial inhomogeneity of minutiae distribution with respect to the level-1 features of singular points and ridge orientation field. We propose a minutiae intensity function to measure the spatial inhomogeneity and a kernel regression model to characterize the relationship between minutiae intensity and the level-1 features. Our statistical experiments on benchmark fingerprint databases show that: 1) the examined level-1 features partially explain regular variation of minutiae spatial distribution; 2) there remain significant fraction of variations unexplained, suggesting additional propositions. These results provide better understanding of the experiential probability of a random correspondence for fingerprint minutiae distribution modelling.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84943250113&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ICB.2015.7139064
DO - 10.1109/ICB.2015.7139064
M3 - Conference proceeding
AN - SCOPUS:84943250113
T3 - Proceedings of 2015 International Conference on Biometrics, ICB 2015
SP - 379
EP - 385
BT - Proceedings of 2015 International Conference on Biometrics, ICB 2015
PB - IEEE
Y2 - 19 May 2015 through 22 May 2015
ER -