Review of Fingerprint Image Enhancement Methods

Extracting features out of poor quality fingerprint image is most challenging problem faced in fingerprint image identification. To make the performance of an automatic fingerprint identification system (AFIS) will be robust with respect to the quality of input fingerprint images, it is essential to incorporate a fingerprint enhancement module in the AFIS system. In this paper I review a various techniques for fingerprint enhancement. General fingerprint image enhancement methods are Local Histogram, Wiener Filtering, Anisotropic Filter, Gaber Filters, Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT), Directional Wavelet Transform (DWT), Second Derivative Gaussian Filter, Pyramid-based enhancement by using Second order Derivative of Gaussian Filter. An enhancement method improves the performance of the fingerprint verification system and makes it more robust with respect to the quality of input fingerprint image.