2008 IEEE International Conference on Signal Image Technology and Internet Based Systems
A Fast Fingerprint Classification Algorithm by Tracing Ridge–flow Patterns
Neeta Nain, Bhavitavya Bhadviya, Biju Gautam, Dinesh Kumar
Department of Computer Engineering
Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur
Abstract
We propose a novel algorithm to classify fingerprint im-
ages using the ridge flow patterns. In Fingerprint Verifi-
cation Systems (FVSs), classification of the fingerprint im-
ages saves time and increases accuracy, as compared to the
sequential search method. In this paper, we have first ex-
tracted the High Ridge Curvature (HRC) region using the
Sobel operator and Gabor filter. Once the region is ex-
tracted, the ridges within the region are traced in both the
directions, starting from any point on the ridge. Vectors are
drawn at the end points of the ridge. The vectors drawn at
the end points are able to determine the class to which a fin-
gerprint image belongs. In case of a whorl, the co-ordinates
of the ridges from the starting point are monitored in or-
der to determine the class. The algorithm is very fast as it
eliminates the core point detection, and is based on simple
ridge–flow connectivity. The implementation was done on
Matlab, and the overall accuracy of classification without
rejection was 98.75%.
1. Introduction
Biometric recognition refers to the use of distinctive
physiological (e.g., fingerprint, face, retina, and iris) and
behavioral (e.g., gait, signature) characteristics, called
biometric identifiers or automatically recognizing individ-
uals. Biometrics offers reliable means of authentication,
and greater security and convenience [5] than traditional
methods of personal recognition; these attributes cannot be
easily shared or stolen.
Classification plays the most important role in increasing
the accuracy of fingerprint matching, and in reducing the
amount of time taken in finding a match. The fingerprint
images are broadly classified into four categories: right
loop, left loop, whorl, and arch. In this paper, algorithm
classifies tented arch and arch as one class. Figure 1 shows
the fingerprint images belonging to different classes. There
are several methods and techniques that classify fingerprint
978-0-7695-3493-0/08 $25.00 © 2008 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/SITIS.2008.101
Deepak B M
GlobalLogic, NOIDA
deepak.b@globallogic.com
images. Some of the algorithms employ mathematical
models to achieve classification. But, the complexity lies
in finding the exact mathematical model, as the fingerprint
images do not show intra-class common patterns. These
methods [11]– [13] are dependent on the positions and
the number of singular points. Some of the methods fall
under the category of frequency domain. In this category,
the images are enhanced, transformed into frequency
domain [3], and the coefficients of frequency are used for
comparison. Methods such as [6]– [10] are based on the
ridge structures, and the locations and the positions of the
minutiae.
The algorithm [12] uses Kohonen’s feature maps in
order to classify the images. The training takes time,
which may adversely affect the time complexity when
the number of test images to be processed is high. [4]
uses one–vs–all support vector machines to classify; the
accuracy is comparable with some of the best algorithms,
but this is at the cost of time taken in classifying. The
algorithm [9] uses a feedback based genetic algorithm,
which is time consuming in error propagation. In [7], the
algorithm is based on the core point detection and this can
be time consuming at times. In [2], the paper presents
a novel algorithm in classifying fingerprint images using
orientation field flow curves. This algorithm considers
generating field flow curves which may be redundant in
some cases. For instance, in a fingerprint image with a
loop, it traces ridges around the delta point, which may be
not necessary. We propose a simple and fast algorithm in
order to handle faster classification. We have minimized
the number of such traces by considering the ridges, for
tracing, only within the HRC region. This also eliminates
the core point detection and hence aids in reducing the time
complexity.
The number of classes is chosen as four, as seen in
Figure 1. The classes tented arch and arch are merged to
form only one class.
235
 3. The local orientations at the pixel (x, y) can be calcu-
lated as follows:
i+ W
2 j+ W
2
X X
Vx (i, j) = 2δx (u, v)δy (u, v) (3)
u=i− W W
2 v=j− 2

i+ W
2 j+ W
2
X X
Vy (i, j) = δx2 (u, v)δy2 (u, v) (4)
u=i− W W
2 v=j− 2

Figure 1. Fingerprint image classes: (a) Right
loop, (b) Whorl, (c) Arch, and (d) Left loop.
2 Algorithm
The algorithm has two stages. In the first stage, the HRC
region [1] is extracted. The core point detection is elimi-
nated in order to reduce computation. In the second stage,
instead of tracing the ridges around the core point, the ridges
in the HRC region are traced. Since the core point lies in
the HRC region, the classification accuracy is not affected.
Once the ridges are traced, the classification is done on the
basis of the vectors drawn at the end points, and other pa-
rameters, which are mentioned in Subsection 2.2.
2.1 High Ridge Curvature (HRC) Extrac-
tion
This stage employs the calculation of the HRC region as
described in [1]. The algorithm used is as follows:
1. A block size of W XW is centered at pixel (i, j) in the
normalized fingerprint image.
2. For every pixel in the block, calculate the gradients
along the X and the Y directions. Call them as δx and
δy respectively. The horizontal Sobel operator used to
compute δx is:
 
1 0 −1
 2 0 −2  (1)
1 0 −1
The vertical Sobel operator used to compute δy is:
 
1 2 1 traced in order to retain good classification accuracy. This
 0 0 0  (2)
−1 −2 −1
1 Vy (i, j) π
θ(i, j) = tan−1 + , (5)
2 Vx (i, j) 2
where θ is the direction of the block centered at pixel
(x, y), it is orthogonal to the local orientation of each
block.
4. The blocks with slope values ranging from 0 to π2 are
located. Then, trace a path down until you encounter
a slope that is not ranging from 0 to π2 and mark that
block. The block with the highest number of marks
yields the HRC region.
2.2 Ridge Tracing
Once, the HRC region is extracted, starting from the
top–most center pixel in the HRC region, we search for
ridges in the downward direction. A tracing is carried out
in both the directions of the ridge, as shown in Figure 2
(a). The tracing is carried out on the thinned–binary image.
The extracted binary image is the output of the Gabor filter.
The tracing classifies the fingerprint images into different
classes.
The tracing is done simply by using the connectivity of
the pixels. While tracing, if a bifurcation is encountered
at any point, one of the branches is traced till the end,
after which, the bifurcation point is reconsidered, and the
second branch is also traced till the end. The pixels are
remembered by marking the pixels, so that re–tracing is
avoided. While tracing any fingerprint image, the number
of interceptions made between the ridges and the vertical
line, formed by joining the top–most and the bottom-most
center pixels in the HRC region, is calculated. The reason
for this is given below. When a bifurcation is encountered,
the tracing of the second branch does not add to the count
of the number of interceptions.
Tracing more than one ridge: this is done in order to
avoid errors in classification. For instance, when a ridge
ends abruptly and unexpectedly, due to physical damages
on the finger or some other reasons, more than one ridge is
is a rare case, though. The Gabor filter based extraction
is very efficient and hence takes care of most of the

236
discontinuous ridges. In this paper, for every image, we
have considered tracing three ridges.
The conditions based on which the images are classified
are:
1. Right loop: A ridge starting from the HRC is traced in
both the directions, and the vectors are drawn at such
points as shown in 2 (b). The angular magnitude be-
tween the ridges is very small as compared to an arch
(where the angular magnitude between the vectors is
large). The calculation of the HRC eliminates the er-
rors significantly. Outside the HRC, or significantly
away from the core point, the tracing fails to classify
the images. For a fingerprint loop, a ridge outside the
HRC may help in wrong classification. The vectors
at the end points may have a large angular magnitude.
This is because, the loop exists only close to the core
point. This is shown in Figure 2 (c). The difference
between a right and a left loop, in order to classify, can
be calculated by taking the sum of the two vectors. The
resultant vectors points to the right of the starting trace
point in case of a Right loop, and lies to the left of the
starting trace point in case of a left loop.
Figure 2. The figure (a) shows how the ridges
within the HRC are traced in both the direc-
tions. The tracing is actually carried out on
the thinned–binary–fingerprint images. This
image is shown for clarity. The HRC, here, is
shown for clarity; it is not the calculated HRC.
Figure (b) shows the vectors drawn by join-
ing the starting point of trace and the ending
points of trace, and the angular magnitude
between the vectors. Figure (c) shows the
wrong classification when a ridge is traced
from outside the HRC.
2. Left loop: The algorithm uses the same technique as it
does for the right loop. The only difference lies in the
resultant vector, which points to the left of the starting
trace point, as is discussed in the previous point.
3. Arch: In case of an arch, the vectors share a large an-
gular magnitude. The angular magnitude is very small
237
for a loop.
4. Whorl: In case of a whorl, the classification is done on
the basis of success in any one or all the below men-
tioned conditions:
• While tracing, the vertical line (formed by join-
ing the top–most and the bottom–most center
pixels in the HRC region) is intercepted many
times, which is not the case for a loop, or an arch.
Typically, the value for the number of such inter-
ceptions for a loop is one in almost all the cases,
and zero for an arch. This is shown in Figure 3.
• While tracing, if the X and the Y coordinates of
the points are monitored by taking a simple av-
erage over the scanned pixels, the centroid (aver-
age) lies very close to the core point, which is not
the case for a loop, or for an arch.
Figure 3. Figure showing the ridges and the
line formed by joining the top-most and the
bottom-most center pixels of the HRC region.
3 Experimental Parameters
This section presents the various parameters that were
obtained during the implementation of the algorithm. Apart
from this, it also shows how the various thresholds of these
parameters are used in order to classify images.
3.1 The Angular Magnitude
The angular magnitude is the angle between the vectors
drawn by joining the end points with the starting trace point
as shown in the Figure 2 (b) and (c). For the fingerprint arch
images, this angle was always greater than 90 degrees. But
for the fingerprint loop images, this angle was always less
than 90 degrees. The difference between the right loop and
 Class Images Taken/Correctly Classified
Left Loop 40/40
Right Loop 40/40
Whorl 40/38
Arch 40/40
Table 1. The classification results so ob-
tained.
the left loop is the resultant vector as discussed in Section
2.2.
3.2 The Number of Intersections
This was seen to be nil for the fingerprint arch images.
But for the fingerprint loop images, this value was at most
two. And for fingerprint whorl images, this was more than
three in all the cases.
4 Results
The fingerprint database that we have used is the
publicly available standard FVC–2004 fingerprint data
– http://bias.csr.unibo.it/fvc2004/download.asp. This
database consists of a total of 320 images (8 copies per per-
son). Some of the FVC–2002 images were also used for
classification. We have manually selected the images under
the four classes. There were 40 images for each class. The
algorithm was implemented on Matlab R2007a, on a Pen-
tium IV processor (3 GHz), and a 1GB RAM.
The time taken for the extraction of the binary image
from the raw fingerprint image was around 3–4 seconds.
The extraction stage can be saved and matching may be con-
tinued from this stage once the classification is completed.
This saves a certain amount of time. The classification of
a single fingerprint image takes negligible amount of time,
since the second stage of the algorithm is geometry based
and simple. The classification results are given in the Ta-
ble 1. The overall classification accuracy was observed to
be 98.75%. The only class which had less than 100% was
whorl.
5 Conclusions and future work
This paper presents a new algorithm to classify finger-
print images into four different classes. The algorithm is
based on simple geometrical techniques and is very easy to
be implemented. The algorithm eliminates the calculation
of the core point and hence stands out as a very fast algo-
rithm. Further work would be directed towards increasing
the accuracy of the whorl fingerprint images.
238
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