FINGERPRINT RECOGNITION AND PASSWORD SECURITY

SYSTEM
PROJECT SUPERVISOR

Dr. SYED WAQAR SHAH

PROJECT LEADER

AMMAD UDDIN

MEMBERS

AMEER ULLAH

RUMMAN KHAN

MUHAMMAD SHAKEEL

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 INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

1.1 The era of biometrics

In the 21st century the use of biometric based systems have seen an
exponential growth. This is all because of tremendous progress in this field
making it possible to bring down their prices, easiness of use and its
diversified use in every day life. Biometrics is becoming new state of art
method of security systems. Biometrics are used to prevent unauthorized
access to ATM, cellular phones , laptops , offices, cars and many other
security concerned things. Biometric have brought significant changes in
security systems making them more secure then before, efficient and cheap.
They have changed the security system from what you remember (such as
password) or what you possess (such as car keys) to something you embody
(retinal patterns, fingerprints, voice recognition).

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 1.2 What is biometrics?

Biometrics is the science of verifying the identity of an individual

through physiological measurements or behavioral traits. Since biometric
identifiers are associated permanently with the user they are more reliable
than token or knowledge based authentication methods.

1.3 Advantages of Biometrics

Biometrics offers several advantages over traditional security

measures. Some of them are presented below.

1.3.1 Accuracy and Security

Biometrics based security systems are far most secure and accurate
than traditional password or token based security systems. For example a
password based security system has always the threat of being stolen and
accessed by the unauthorized user. Further more the traditional security
systems are always prone to accuracy as compared to biometrics which is
more accurate.

1.3.2 One individual, Multiple IDs

Traditional security systems face the problem that they don’t give
solution to the problem of individuals having multiple IDs. For examples a
person having multiple passports to enter a foreign country. Thanks to
biometrics!!! They give us a system in which an individual can’t possess
multiple IDs and can’t change his ID through out his life time. Each individual
is identified through a unique Biometric identity throughout the world.

1.3.3 One ID, multiple individuals

In traditional security systems one ID can be used by multiple

individuals. For example in case of a password based security system a
single password can be shared among multiple individuals and they can
share the resources allotted to a single individual. Biometric based security
system doesn’t allow such a crime. Here each individual has a single unique
ID and it can’t be shared with any other individual.

1.4 Biometrics categories

Biometrics can be categorized in various categories as follow.

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 1.4.1 Physical biometrics

This biometrics involves measurement of physical characteristics of

individuals. The most prominent of these include

• Fingerprints

• Face

• Hand geometry

• Iris scans

Fingerprints

Fingerprints recognition has been present for a few hundred years. Due
to tremendous research this field has reached such a point where the
purchase of fingerprint security system is quite affordable. For this reason
these systems are becoming more widespread in a variety of applications.

Fingerprint image.

Face

There has been significant achievement in face recognition system in

past few years. Due to these advancements this problem appears to be
eventually technologically feasible and economically realistic. In addition,

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current research involves developing more robust approaches that accounts
for changes in lighting, expression, and aging, where potential variations for
a given person are illustrated in Figure. Also, other problem areas being
investigated include dealing with glasses, facial hair, and makeup.
Facial Expression Image

Hand geometry

Hand geometry is one of the most basic biometrics in use today. A

two-dimensional system can be implemented with a simple document
scanner or digital camera, as these systems only measure the distances
between various points on the hand. Meanwhile, a three dimensional system
provides more information and greater reliability. These systems, however,
require a more expensive collection device than the inexpensive scanners
that can be used in a two-dimensional system. An example of a commercial
three-dimensional scanner is shown in Figure.

Commercial three-dimensional scanner

As seen in this image, the physical size of the scanner limits its
application in portable devices. The primary advantage of hand geometry
systems is that they are simple and inexpensive to use. Also, poor weather
and individual anomalies such as dry skin or cuts along the hand do not
appear to negatively affect the system. The geometry of the hand, however,
is not a very distinctive quality. In addition, wearing jewelry or other items on
the fingers may adversely affect the system’s performance.

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 Iris

Iris recognition has taken on greater interest in recent years. As this

technology advances, purchasing these systems has become more
affordable. These systems are attractive because the pattern variability of
the iris among different persons is extremely large. Thus, these systems can
be used on a larger scale with a small possibility of incorrectly matching an
imposter. Also, the iris is well protected from the environment and remains
stable over time. In terms of localizing the iris from a face, its distinct shape
allows for precise and reliable isolation. Figure shows the unique iris pattern
data extracted from a sample input.

Iris pattern

1.4.2 Behavioral biometrics

This category of biometrics is temporal in nature. They are evolved

during the life time of an individual. It involves measuring the way in which
an individual performs certain tasks. Behavioral biometrics include

• Gait

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 • Handwriting

• Speech

• Signature

Now let discuss some the behavioral biometrics in a little detail.

Gait

Gait-based recognition involves identifying a person’s walking style.

Although these systems are currently very limited, there is a significant
amount of research being conducted in this area. Furthermore, studies have
shown that gait changes over time and is also affected by clothes, footwear,
walking surfaces, and other conditions. Figure below outlines the various
stages of a gait cycle.

Samples recorded from a gait cycle

1.4.3 Chemical biometrics:

This is a new emerging field. It involves measuring of chemical or

biological composition of an individual different body parts such as

• DNA

• Blood glucose

1.5 Multi-biometric systems

Similar to multimodal systems, there are several other techniques

aimed at improving the performance of a biometric system, as outlined in
Figure below.

1.5.1 Multimodal
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 Multimodal systems employ more than one biometric recognition
technique to arrive at a final decision. These systems may be necessary to
ensure accurate performance. Combining several biometrics in one system
allows for improved performance as each individual biometric has its own
strengths and weaknesses. Using more than one biometric also provides
more diversity in cases where it is not possible to obtain a particular
characteristic for a person at a given time. Although acquiring more
measurements increases the cost and computational requirements, the extra
data allows for much greater performance.

1.5.2 Multialgorithmic

These techniques acquire a single sample from one sensor and process
this signal with two or more different algorithms.

1.5.3 Multi-instance

These systems use a sensor to obtain data for different instances of

the same biometric, such as capturing fingerprints from different fingers of
the same person.

1.5.4 Multi-sensorial

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 These systems sample the same biometric trait with two or more
different sensors, such as scanning a fingerprint using both optical and
capacitance scanners.

Multi-biometric categories

FINGERPRINT
IENTIFICATION
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SYSTEM
 Fingerprint Identification system

2.1 A brief history

Fingerprints have been scientifically studied for many years in our

society. The characteristics of fingerprints were studied as early as 1600s.
Meanwhile, using fingerprints as a means of identification first occurred in
the mid-1800s. Sir William Herschel, in 1859, discovered that fingerprints do
not change over time and that each pattern is unique to an individual. With
these findings, he was the first to implement a system using fingerprints and
handprints to identify an individual in 1877. By 1896, police forces in India
realized the benefit of using fingerprints to identify criminals, and they began
collecting the fingerprints of prisoners along with their other measurements.

With a growing database of fingerprint images, it soon became

desirable to have an efficient manner of classifying the various images.
Between 1896 and 1897, Sir Edward Henry developed the Henry
Classification System, which quickly found worldwide acceptance within a
few years. This system allows for logical categorization of a complete set of
the ten fingerprint images for a person. By establishing groupings based on
fingerprint pattern types, the Henry System greatly reduces the effort of
searching a large database. Until the mid-1990s, many organizations
continued to use the Henry Classification System to store their physical files
of fingerprint images.

As fingerprints began to be utilized in more fields, the number of

requests for fingerprint matching began to increase on a daily basis. At the
same time, the size of the databases continued to expand with each passing
day. Therefore, it soon became difficult for teams of fingerprint experts to
provide accurate results in a timely manner. In the early 1960s, the FBI,
Home Office in the United Kingdom, and Paris Police Department began to
devote a large amount of resources in developing automatic fingerprint
identification systems. These systems allowed for an improvement in

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operational productivity among law enforcement agencies. At the same time,
the automated systems reduced funding requirements to hire and train
human fingerprint experts. Today, automatic fingerprint recognition
technology can be found in a wide range of civilian applications.

2.2 Fingerprint details

In this section structure and detail about fingerprint image will be

explained. We will emphasize and give greater detail of only those
terminologies which are related to our project.

2.2.1 What is a fingerprint?

A fingerprint is the feature pattern of one’s finger as shown in figure

below. It is believed with strong evidence that these feature patterns are
unique for each individual. So each individual has its own fingerprint with
permanent uniqueness. That’s why fingerprints have been used for
identification and forensic investigation for a long time.

A fingerprint image acquired by a sensor.

2.2.3 Fingerprint features

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 A fingerprint pattern is composed of a sequence of ridges and valleys.
In a fingerprint image, the ridges appear as dark lines while the valleys are
the light areas between the ridges. A cut or burn to a finger does not affect
the underlying ridge structure, and the original pattern will be reproduced
when new skin grows. Ridges and valleys generally run parallel to each
other, and their patterns can be analyzed on a global and local level.

Ridges and valleys generally run parallel to each other, and their
patterns can be analyzed on a global and local level.

2.2.4 Global level

At the global level, the fingerprint image will have one or more regions
where the ridge lines have a distinctive shape.

2.2.5 Local level

While the global level allows for a general classification of fingerprints,

analyzing the image at the local level provides a significant amount of detail.
These details are obtained by observing the locations where a ridge becomes
discontinuous, known as minutiae points. Our project is also based on the
minutiae based recognition.

The most common types of minutiae are shown in Figure below.

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 Ridge Types

In general, a ridge can either come to an end, which is called a

termination, or it can split into two ridges, which is called a bifurcation. The
other types of minutiae are slightly more complicated combinations of
terminations and bifurcations. For example, a lake is simply a sequence of
two bifurcations in opposing directions, while an independent ridge features
two separate terminations within a close distance. In our project we will use
only the ridge ending and ridge bifurcation for identification.

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 Minutiae Types (Terminations and Bifurcations)

2.3 FINGERPRINT MATCHING TECHNIQUES

Two main approaches are used for fingerprint matching which are
described below.

2.3.1 Minutiae based

The first approach, which is minutia-based, represents the fingerprint

by its local features, like terminations and bifurcations. This approach has
been intensively studied, also is the backbone of the current available
fingerprint recognition products. I am also using this approach in my project.

2.3.2 Image based

The second approach, which uses image-based methods, tries to do

matching based on the global features of a whole fingerprint image. It is an
advanced and newly emerging method for fingerprint recognition. It is useful
to solve some problems of the first approach. But my project does not aim at
this method, so further study in this direction is not expanded in my thesis.

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SYSTEM DESIGN
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 3.1 System Level Design

A fingerprint recognition system consists of image acquisition,

minutiae extractor and minutiae matcher. In our project there is also a
password security added so a password acquisition and password matcher is
also needed.

For fingerprint acquisition, optical or semi-conduct sensors are widely

used. But for my project I have used the available fingerprints on the net for
testing. So no acquisition stage is implemented.

The minutia extractor and minutia matcher modules are explained in

detail in the next part for algorithm design and other subsequent sections.

3.2 Algorithmic Level Design

To implement our project a four stage approach has been used. These
four stages are given in the figure below.

Preprocessing
• Image enhancement
• Image Binarization
• Image segmentation

Minutiae Extraction
• Thinning
• Minutiae marking
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 Post-processing
• False minutiae
removal

Minutiae Matching
Figure. Project

System Process flow Chart

Each of these stages will now be explained in detail in the next

chapter.

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 FINGERPRINT IMAGE
PROCESSINGS

4.1 Fingerprint Image Enhancement

The performance a fingerprint recognition system basically depends

upon the quality of the input image. Since the images acquired with different
kinds of sensors are not of the perfect quality and so they can’t be used
directly for the matching. Therefore to ensure the accurate working of the
system the image is first enhanced using different algorithms and image
processing techniques.

I have used histogram equalization in my project for the fingerprint

image enhancement. It is explained below.

4.1.1 Histogram Equalization

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 Histogram equalization is used to expand the pixels to all the intensity
values from 0 to 255. Some of the original images are very dark i.e. their
histogram is such that their intensity values are concentrated towards the
origin i.e. near zero intensity value. On the other hand some of the images
are very bright i.e. their intensity values are concentrated towards 255 and
nearby intensity values. After applying the histogram equalization the pixels
are distributed uniformly all over the intensity values from 0 to 255. Due to
this process the contrast of the image is increased and so the visual effect of
the image is increased.

2000

1800

1600

1400

1200

1000

800

600

400

200

0 50 100 150 200 250

Histogram of image before enhancement.

3000

2500

2000

1500

1000

500

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0

0 50 100 150 200 250

 Histogram of image after enhancement.

Fingerprint image
Before Histogram Equalization

Fingerprint image
After Histogram Equalization

4.2 Fingerprint Image Binarization

Fingerprint Image Binarization is to transform the 8-bit Gray fingerprint

image to a 1-bit image with 0-value for ridges and 1-value for furrows. After

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the operation, ridges in the fingerprint are highlighted with black color while
furrows are white.

First a threshold value from the image is selected using matlab

function ‘graythresh’. A threshold intensity value between 0 and 1 is
obtained using the above function. This value is then used to convert the
grey image to a black and white image. The value of pixel which is less then
the above threshold value calculated is taken as 0 representing the ridge in
black color. A value of the pixel in the image which is greater than the
threshold value calculated is then converted to 1 representing the white
color valley or furrow. The following image shows the image before and after
Binarization

Fingerprint
image before
Binarization.

Figure.
Fingerprint
image after
Binarization

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 Fingerprint image segmentation

In general, only a Region of Interest (ROI) is useful to be recognized for

each fingerprint image. The image area without effective ridges and furrows
is first discarded since it only holds background information. Then the bound
of the remaining effective area is sketched out since the minutia in the
bound region is confusing with that spurious minutia that is generated when
the ridges are out of the sensor.

4.3 ROI by morphological operations

Two Morphological operations called ‘OPEN’ and ‘CLOSE’ are adopted.

The ‘OPEN’ operation can expand images and remove peaks introduced by
background noise. The ‘CLOSE’ operation can shrink images and eliminate
small cavities.

4.4 Fingerprint Ridge Thinning

Ridge Thinning is to eliminate the redundant pixels of ridges till the

ridges are just one pixel wide. For this purpose I have used matlab built in
function ‘bwmorph’. This function repeats operation on the ridges until they
are one pixel wide and are suitable for minutiae extraction phase.

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 MINUTIAE MATCHING

5.1 Minutia Marking

After the fingerprint ridge thinning, marking minutia points is relatively

easy. In general, for each 3x3 window, if the central pixel is 1 and has exactly

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3 one-value neighbors, then the central pixel is a ridge branch as shown in
figure. If the central pixel is 1 and has only 1 one-value neighbor, then the
central pixel is a ridge ending shown in figure below.

0 1 0 0 0 0
0 1 0 0 1 0
1 0 1 0 0 1
Bifurcation Termination

Also the average inter-ridge width D is estimated at this stage. The

average inter-ridge width refers to the average distance between two
neighboring ridges. The way to approximate the D value is simple. Scan a
row of the thinned ridge image and sum up all pixels in the row whose value
is one. Then divide the row length with the above summation to get an inter-
ridge width. For more accuracy, such kind of row scan is performed upon
several other rows and column scans are also conducted, finally all the inter-
ridge widths are averaged to get the D.

5.2 Post processing

Post processing mainly involves removal of the false minutiae from the
fingerprint image.
As described earlier, the crossing number algorithm is used again to
locate the terminations and bifurcations within the final thinned image. In
this process, the locations where the ridges end at the outer boundaries of
the image are classified as terminations. In the true sense, however, these
locations are not unique termination minutiae. Instead, they only appear as
terminations because the dimensions of the image force each ridge to come
to an end. Knowing this, these locations should not be recorded as minutiae
within the fingerprint. One way to eliminate such locations involves creating
an ellipse to only select minutiae points inside the fingerprint image.

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 The center of the ellipse is established by locating the minimum and
maximum rows and columns that contain a ridge pixel, then calculating the
row and column that lie halfway between these extremes.

5.3 Minutiae Matching

The matching process involves comparing one set of minutiae data to

another set. In most cases, this process compares an input data set to a
previously stored data set with a known identity, referred to as a template.
The template is created during the enrollment process, when a user presents
a finger for the system to collect the data from. This information is then
stored as the defining characteristics for that particular user.
In our project since the whole process is done in matlab so there is no
need for database creation. We need to compare only two images. If both the
images are from the same fingerprint they are matched otherwise they are
unmatched. The following are the steps involved in the matching process.
1. First of all the two fingerprints which are to be matched are
load into the matching function.
2. Minutiae points i.e ridge ending and ridge bifurcation
extracted from both fingerprint images are laoded into the
function.
3. A built in matlab function ‘isequal’ is used to compare the
two minutiae points i.e ridge ending and ridge bifurcation of
both the images with each other.
4. If both the ridge endings and ridge bifurcations of the two
fingerprint images matches with each other, only then the
fingerprint images are matched otherwise they are
unmatched.

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PASSWORD SECURITY

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 Password Security

Password?

A password is a secret word or string of characters that is used to

prove identity or gain access to a resource. The password must be kept
secret from those not allowed access.

Fingerprint is the state of art security measure as compared to

password and other conventional security methods. But in our project we
have summed up both the fingerprint and password security in order to
design a more secure and efficient security system. Since our project design
and simulation is in matlab so we have used matlab coding to implement this
task. The steps used in method are as follow.

1. First of all an array of passwords is saved in m file of matlab.

2. When a user wants to enter the system he must enter the password
to get access.

3. When the password is entered it is matched with the already stored

passwords in the m file.

4. If the entered password matches with any of the passwords in the

array stored in the m file then the password matches dialogue box appears.

5. If the password does not matches with any of the passwords stored
in the array then an unmatched messages is displayed and access is not
granted to the user.

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 In our project the Password security works and is presented in the
following way as shown in different figures.

6.2 Password GUI

a). when the user enters the Enter Password button a dialogue box
appears asking the user to enter password.

Password GUI 1

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 b). when the user enters the password and presses OK on the dialogue
box another dialogue box appears showing whether the password is matched
or not.

Password GUI 2

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SYSTEM GUI AND ITS
USER MANUAL

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 7.1 GUI User Manual

We have presented our project in matlab GUI. Following are different

steps showing its operation.

1. Open the matlab 6.0 or above.

2. In the matlab command window type fig1 and press enter.

Matlab Command Window

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 The following window will appear when we press enter in the above
figure.

Main GUI Window

There are three main panels in the main window as shown in the above
figure. There is a control panel, view panel and exit panel. Control panel have
two buttons of which match images is of main importance. The view panel
shows different buttons used for performing different operations on the two
images.

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3. From the file menu click open and load two images as show in the
figure below.

GUI Loading Images

4. After loading the two images we can view the images by clicking on
the view images button in the view panel as show below.

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 GUI View Images

5. By clicking on the View Transform button in the View Panel we can

view the transformed image after different image preprocessing and
post processing algorithms applied as show below.

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 Transformed Images

6. When we click the histograms button in the view panel, the

histograms of the two images are shown as in the figure below.

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Histogram of Original Images

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7. Click on the Hist Equalization to view the equalized histogram of
the two images as shown below.

Histogram Of Images After Equalization

8. when we click the match images, it compares the two images and
displays the result. If the two fingerprint images match then a
message box is shown showing “Fingerprint matched”, otherwise

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 the message box displays “Fingerprint don’t match” as shown
below.

Fingerprint Matching Result

9. In the Control Panel click on Enter Password to enter password for

authentication. When we click on this button user is asked to enter
password in the matlab command window. If the password is
matched a message box appears showing that the password is
matched otherwise the message box shows that the password did
not match.

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Password Matching Result

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CONCLUSION
 Conclusion

In our project we have combined biometric i.e. fingerprint and

conventional security i.e. password security system. The conventional
password security has several advantages as well as disadvantages. Those
disadvantages have been overcome by using it with fingerprint security
system. So overall system has both the advantages of the state of art
biometric and conventional security system which makes it more powerful
than either of the two security measures. The efficiency of the fingerprint
security system mainly depends upon the accuracy and the response time.
Keeping these two things in mind we have used robust algorithms giving us
fast response time and accuracy.

Future work

Following are the some of the recommendations and future work that
can be done in order to enhance the system further.
1. There is a need in fingerprint security system to detect
whether the fingerprint is from a living user or not.
Experiments have shown that fingerprint security systems can
be fooled by using copy of the fingerprint from a user.

2. Several biometric may be combined i.e. multi biometric

security system may be used in order further increase the
security and efficiency.

3. It is obvious that biometric systems will govern the security

domain in future electronic world. So due increase in usage
the identification speed and accuracy will be the crucial
factors. Therefore the algorithms may be optimized in such a
way in order to meet these demands.

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