New Combined Technique for Fingerprint Image Enhancement

This paper presents a combination of enhancement techniques for fingerprint images affected by different type of noise. These techniques were applied to improve image quality and come up with an acceptable image contrast. The proposed method included five different enhancement techniques- Normalization, Histogram Equalization, Binarization, Skeletonization and Fusion. The Normalization process standardized the pixel intensity which facilitated the processing of subsequent image enhancement stages. Subsequently, the Histogram Equalization technique increased the contrast of the images. Furthermore, the Binarization and Skeletonization techniques were implemented to differentiate between the ridge and valley structures and to obtain one pixel-wide lines. Finally, the Fusion technique was used to merge the results of the Histogram Equalization process with the Skeletonization process to obtain the new high contrast images. The proposed method was tested in different quality images from National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) special database 14. The experimental results are very encouraging and the current enhancement method appeared to be effective by improving different quality images.