MATLAB: How to segment a fingerprint image

fingerprintImage Processing Toolboximage segmentation

Hi, I am very new to matlab, could you please help with a code on how to segment a fingerprint image? I need a black background, leaving just the region of interest with the ridges and values of the actual print.I am working on a grayscale image.

Best Answer

Well you could simply threshold it if you have a good image, but if you don't it can be very complicated. I don't know all the sophisticated/modern/recent methods they use but you can find them listed here http://iris.usc.edu/Vision-Notes/bibliography/contentspeople.html#Face%20Recognition,%20Detection,%20Tracking,%20Gesture%20Recognition,%20Fingerprints,%20Biometrics in section 21.6:
21.6 Fingerprint Recognition Methods
    21.6.1 Fingerprint Features, Minutiae, Ridges
        21.6.1.1 Fingerprint Features, Ridges, Flow, Orientation Based 
    21.6.2 Fingerprint Features, Singular Points
    21.6.3 Fingerprint Systems, Overviews, Comparisons, Evaluation
        21.6.3.1 Finger Veins, Recognition and Extraction
        21.6.3.2 Liveness Detection, Spoofing, Fingerprint Recognition 
    21.6.4 Fingerprint Unrolling, Image Enhancement and Compression
Alternatively you can try Peter Kovesi's web site: http://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/~pk/Research/MatlabFns/#fingerprints. He has uploaded MATLAB code.
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