A New Approach to Unwrap a 3-D Fingerprint to a 2-D Rolled Equivalent Fingerprint

For many years, fingerprints have been captured by pressing a finger against a paper or hard surface. This touch based fingerprint acquisition introduces some problems such as distortions and deformations in the acquired images, which arise due to the contact of the fingerprint surface with the sensor platen, and degrades the recognition performance. A new touch less fingerprint technology has been recently introduced to the market, which can address the problems with the contact-based fingerprint systems. In this paper, the authors propose a new algorithm for unwrapping the acquired 3-D scan of the subject's finger into a 2-D rolled equivalent image.