ARTICLE IN PRESS

Pattern Recognition Letters xxx (2003) xxxxxx

www.elsevier.com/locate/patrec

A modied Gabor lter design method for ngerprint

image enhancement
Jianwei Yang, Lifeng Liu, Tianzi Jiang *, Yong Fan

National Laboratory of Pattern Recognition, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 2728,
Beijing 100080, PR China
Received 17 June 2002; received in revised form 8 January 2003

Abstract
Fingerprint image enhancement is an essential preprocessing step in ngerprint recognition applications. In this
paper, we propose a novel lter design method for ngerprint image enhancement, primarily inspired from the traditional Gabor lter (TGF). The previous ngerprint image enhancement methods based on TGF banks have some
drawbacks in their image-dependent parameter selection strategy, which leads to artifacts in some cases. To address this
issue, we develop an improved version of the TGF, called the modied Gabor lter (MGF). Its parameter selection
scheme is image-independent. The remarkable advantages of our MGF over the TGF consist in preserving ngerprint
image structure and achieving image enhancement consistency. Experimental results indicate that the proposed MGF
enhancement algorithm can reduce the FRR of a ngerprint matcher by approximately 2% at a FAR of 0.01%.
2003 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.
Keywords: Fingerprints; Enhancement; Traditional Gabor lter; Modied Gabor lter; Parameter selection; Low pass lter; Band pass
lter

1. Introduction
Fingerprint recognition is being widely applied
in the personal identication for the purpose of
high degree of security. However, some ngerprint
images captured in variant applications are poor in
quality, which corrupts the accuracy of ngerprint

Corresponding authors. Tel.: +86-10-8261-4469; fax: +8610-6255-1993.

E-mail addresses: jwyangtz@nlpr.ia.ac.cn (J. Yang), liu@
nlpr.ia.ac.cn (L. Liu), jiangtz@nlpr.ia.ac.cn (T. Jiang), yfan@
nlpr.ia.ac.cn (Y. Fan).

recognition. Consequently, ngerprint image enhancement is usually the rst step in most automatic ngerprint identication systems (AFISs).
There have existed a variety of research activities along the stream of reducing noises and increasing the contrast between ridges and valleys
in the gray-scale ngerprint images. Some approaches are implemented in spatial domain, others
in frequency domain. OGorman and Nickerson
(1989) and Mehtre (1993) performed ngerprint
image enhancement based on directional lters;
Maio and Maltoni (1998) employed neural
network in minutiae ltering; Almansa and
Lindeberg (2000) enhanced them in scale space;

0167-8655/03/$ - see front matter 2003 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.

doi:10.1016/S0167-8655(03)00005-9

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J. Yang et al. / Pattern Recognition Letters xxx (2003) xxxxxx

Greenberg et al. (2000) and Jiang (2001) resorted

to an anisotropic lter and an oriented low pass
lter to suppress noises respectively. In contrast
with the above methods in spatial domain, Sherlock et al. (1994), Willis and Myers (2000) and
Kamei and Mizoguchi (1995) denoised ngerprint
images in frequency domain. There are advantages
and disadvantages of analysis merely in spatial
domain or frequency domain. As is well known,
the Gabor lter is a very useful tool for texture
analysis in both domains and hence combines the
advantages of both lters. Considering their frequency-selective and orientation-selective properties and optimal joint resolution in both domains,
Hong et al. (1998) made use of Gabor lter banks
to enhance ngerprint images and reported to
achieve good performance.
In their algorithm, called the traditional Gabor
lter (TGF) method in this paper, Hong et al.
assumed that the parallel ridges and valleys exhibit
some ideal sinusoidal-shaped plane waves associated with some noises. In other words, the 1-D
signal orthogonal to the local orientation is approximately a digital sinusoidal wave. Then, the
TGF is tuned to the corresponding local orientation and ridge frequency (reciprocal of ridge distance) in order to remove noises and preserve the
genuine ridge and valley structures. Unfortunately,

their prior sinusoidal plane wave assumption is

inaccurate because the signal orthogonal to the
local orientation in practice does not consist of
an ideal digital sinusoidal plane wave in some
ngerprint images or some regions (see Fig. 1).
Moreover, the TGFs parameter selection in their
method (such as the standard deviation of the
Gaussian function) is empirical. This implementation implies the disadvantage of image-dependence. In some cases, it could unexpectedly result
in inconsistent image enhancement, which is
baneful to the following steps.
In order to overcome its shortcomings, we
improve the TGF to the modied Gabor lter
(MGF) by discarding the inaccurate prior sinusoidal plane wave assumption. Our MGFs parameters are deliberately specied through some
principles instead of experience and an imageindependent parameter selection scheme is applied. Experimental results illustrate that our
MGF could achieve better performance than the
TGF.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In
Section 2, we briey introduce the TGF and our
MGF, and meanwhile highlight our motivation of
extending the TGF to the MGF. Section 3 is devoted to the parameter selection of our MGF.
Implementation is detailed in Section 4. Experi-

Fig. 1. A ngerprint image and corresponding ridge and valley topography. The top-right region can be approximately treated as a
sinusoidal plane wave, but never the bottom-left.

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mental results are shown in Section 5. In Section 5

we made some conclusions.

2. Traditional Gabor lter and modied Gabor lter

The Gabor function has been recognized as a
very useful tool in computer vision and image
processing, especially for texture analysis, due to
its optimal localization properties in both spatial
and frequency domain. There are lots of papers
published on its applications since Gabor (1946)
proposed the 1-D Gabor function. The family of
2-D Gabor lters was originally presented by
Daugman (1980) as a framework for understanding the orientation-selective and spatialfrequencyselective receptive eld properties of neurons in the
brains visual cortex, and then was further mathematically elaborated (Daugman, 1985).
The 2-D Gabor function is a harmonic oscillator, composed of a sinusoidal plane wave of a
particular frequency and orientation, within a
Gaussian envelope. A complex 2-D Gabor lter
over the image domain x; y is dened as
!
x  x0 2 y  y0 2
Gx; y exp 

2r2x
2r2y
 exp2piu0 x  x0 v0 y  y0 1
where x0 ; y0 specify the location in the image,
u0 ; v0 specifyingp
modulation that has spatial
frequency x0 u20 v20 and orientation h0
arctanv0 =u0 , and rx and ry are the standard deviations of the Gaussian envelope respectively
along x-axis and y-axis. Derived from formula (1)
by elaborately selecting above parameters, the
even-symmetric real component of the original 2D Gabor ler can be obtained, which is adopted in
(Jain and Farrokhnia, 1991; Hong et al., 1998):
gx; y; T ; / exp

"
#!


1 x2/ y/2
2px/


cos
2 r2x r2y
T
2

x/ x cos / y sin /

y/ x sin / y cos /

where / is the orientation of the derived Gabor

lter, and T is the period of the sinusoidal plane
wave.
If we decompose formula (2) into two orthogonal parts, one parallel and the other perpendicular to the orientation /, the following formula
can be deduced:
gx; y; T ; / hx x; T ; /  hy y; /
(
!

)
x2/
2px/
exp  2 cos
2rx
T
(
!)
y/2
 exp  2
2ry

The rst part hx behaves as a 1-D Gabor function

which is a band pass lter, and the second one hy
represents a Gaussian function which is a low pass
lter. Therefore, a 2-D even-symmetric Gabor lter (TGF) performs a low pass ltering along
the orientation / and a band pass ltering orthogonal to its orientation /. The band pass and
low pass properties along the two orthogonal
orientations are very benecial to enhancing ngerprint images, since these images usually show a
periodic alternation between ridges and valleys
orthogonal to the local orientation and parallel
exhibit an approximate continuity along the local
orientation.
It should be pointed out that hx in formula (5)
could be treated as a non-admissible mother
wavelet (indicated by its Fourier representation
h^x 0 6 0). Its band pass property is related with
the rx . If rx is too small, the band pass lter degenerates into a low pass function (indicated by its
Fourier representation h^x 0 0). On the other
hand, if rx is appropriately large, hx can be approximately regarded as an admissible mother
wavelet (indicated by its Fourier representation
h^x 0
0) with good band pass property (see Fig.
2).
For the purpose of enhancing ngerprint images
by the TGF, Hong et al. (1998) assumed that ridges
and valleys show a sinusoidal plane wave pattern
and specied the parameter T in formula (2) or (5)
as the distance between two successive ridges.
However, in practice this prior assumption is inaccurate. In Fig. 1, the ridge and valley structures

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J. Yang et al. / Pattern Recognition Letters xxx (2003) xxxxxx

Fig. 2. The TGF and its response represented in spatial and frequency domain.

in the top-right region can be roughly regarded as a

sinusoidal plane wave pattern, but never those in
the bottom-left region. In that case, the TGF
method fails. This phenomenon can be explicitly
explained in frequency domain. Although a band
pass lter can enlarge the signal of a particular
frequency and suppress others, the preferred frequency cannot be accurately specied in some
cases. In other words, the ridge and valley pattern
like the bottom-left region of Fig. 1 is not composed of a sinusoidal plane wave of only a particular frequency but a periodic one whose Fourier
extension contains dierent frequency harmonics.
The TGF cannot pass the entire harmonics except
the signal of a particular frequency. However, the
low frequency components usually contain useful
texture information (e.g. slow variation of intensities near ridges centers orthogonal to the local
orientation is represented as low frequency com-

ponents, see Fig. 1(b)). Thereby, the TGF method

may lose some useful original information.
To overcome the TGFs drawbacks mentioned
above, we replace the cosine function cosx; T in
formula (2) and (5) with another periodic function
F x; T1 ; T2 to construct our MGF. It is incorporated with two cosinusoidal functional curves with
dierent periods T1 and T2 (see Fig. 3). The parts
above the x-axis consist of a cosinusoidal functional curve with a period T1 and the ones below
the x-axis consist of another cosinusoidal functional curve with dierent period T2 . F x; T1 ; T2 is
extended periodically and elaborated mathematically as follows:


F x; T1 ; T2 f x 



x
 T1 =2 T2 =2
T1 =2 T2 =2
6

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J. Yang et al. / Pattern Recognition Letters xxx (2003) xxxxxx

f x
8 
>
06 x6T1 =4
cos 2px
>
T1
>
>
>
<


2 =4
T1 =4 < x < T1 =4 T2 =2
 cos 2pxT1T=4T
2
>
>
>


>
>
: cos 2pxT1 =2T2 =2
T1 =4 T2 =26 x6T1 =2 T2 =2
T1

Fig. 3. The periodic function F x; T1 ; T2 . The parts above the

x-axis consist of a cosinusoidal functional curve with period T1 ,
and those below the x-axis consist of another cosinusoidal
functional curve with dierent period T2 .

where btc floort means the largest integer not

larger than t.
From the above denition, F x; T1 ; T2 is a periodic even-symmetric oscillator with the period
T1 T2 =2, and it becomes a true cosinusoidal
function when T1 T2 . Then, our MGF can be
specied by modulating the periodic function
F x; T1 ; T2 by a 2-D anisotropic Gaussian function. So, formula (5) is turned into

Fig. 4. Our MGF and its response represented in spatial and frequency domain.

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J. Yang et al. / Pattern Recognition Letters xxx (2003) xxxxxx

g0 x; y; T1 ; T2 ; / h0x x; T1 ; T2 ; /  h0y y; /
(
)
!
x2/
exp  2 F x/ ; T1 ; T2
2rx
(
!)
y/2
 exp  2
8
2ry
The frequency representation of the MGF is no
longer a band pass lter passing only one central
frequency component, but a band pass lter associated with a bank of low pass lters (see Fig. 4).
The associated low pass lters are benecial to
passing the useful low frequency components.
Therefore, our MGF can more straightforwardly
express the texture characteristics of ngerprint
images than the TGF.

3. Parameter selection
Parameter selection plays a crucial role in the
use of the TGF and has long been a research focus
in the eld of image processing. However, the
computation of lter coecients is very complex
(Bovick et al., 1990). For texture analysis, some
principles of parameter selection are proposed (e.g.
Jain and Farrokhnia, 1991; Clausi and Jernigan,
2000) based on comparison between the output
of the human visual system and the Gabor lter
response. Responsible for the specic ngerprint image enhancement, parameter selection also
needs to be explored. In the TGF, there are ve
parameters to be specied, including the Gabor
lter orientation /, the standard deviations rx and
ry of the 2-D Gaussian function, the period T of
the assumed sinusoidal plane wave and the convolution mask size 2N 1  2N 1. Hong
et al. specied them based on the empirical data.
In our MGF, the period T is decomposed into T1
and T2 , and most of the parameters including the
convolution mask size are specied adaptively.
3.1. Orientation / of modied Gabor lter
Hong et al. (1998) rstly utilized a least mean
square estimation method to compute the orien-

tation eld of ngerprint images block-wisely. The

steps are as follows:
1. Divide the input ngerprint image into blocks
of size W  W .
2. Compute the gradients Gx and Gy at each pixel
x; y in each block.
3. Estimate the local orientation of each block using the following formula:
hi;j
1
tan1
2

PiW =2

PjW =2
uiW =2
vjW =2 2Gx u;vGy u;v
PiW =2 PjW =2
2
2
uiW =2
vjW =2 Gx u; v  Gy u;v

9
Then, hi; j is regularized into the range of p=2
to p=2. Finally, the parameter / of the TGF is
chosen as the orientation of each block.
However, their block-wise scheme is coarse and
cannot obtain ne orientation eld, which tends to
corrupt the TGFs performance. In order to estimate the orientation eld more accurately, we extend their method into a pixel-wise one. For each
pixel, a block with size W  W centered at the pixel
is referred to, so the orientation of each pixel can
be estimated by the formula (9). To reduce the
computational cost, a sliding window technique is
employed (Yang et al., 2002). For an image, the
orientation of the MGF is tuned to the orientation
at current pixel, and thus a low pass ltering along
the orientation and a band pass associated with
low pass ltering orthogonal to the orientation are
performed.
It needs to be emphasized that a step of
smoothing the orientation eld by a low pass lter
is necessary since sometimes the orientation eld is
distorted by noises.
3.2. Periods T1 and T2
Examining the formulas (5)(8), we draw the
conclusion that T1 =2 T2 =2 in our MGF corresponds to T in the TGF that is depicted as the
ridge distance by Hong et al. (1998) and they become the same when T1 T2 . Further investigating
the formula (8), we learn that the zero crossings of
g0 are merely determined by the oscillator F x; T1 ;
T2 . Accordingly, we specify T1 and T2 as double

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of the local ridge width and valley width. The

determination of T1 and T2 is detailed as follows.
Let Ii; j denote an arbitrary pixel to be ltered
currently whose neighborhoods have the ridge
width Wr and valley width Wv . Firstly, a method is
applied to roughly determine whether Ii; j is located on a ridge or valley. If Ii; j belongs to a
ridge then T1 is set as 2Wr and T2 as 2Wv . Otherwise, if Ii; j is on a valley then T1 is set as 2Wv
and T2 as 2Wr (see Fig. 5). The selection of T1
and T2 ensures that the centric pixels on each
ridges and valleys are given the heaviest weights
in the later convolution phase, which benets to
enhance the contrast between ridges and valleys.
To this end, there are two prerequisites to be
solved:
1. How to compute the ridge width Wr and valley
width Wv .
2. How to determine whether a pixel is on a ridge
or valley, i.e. segmentation of ridges and valleys.
Before addressing the two issues, a step of
smoothing the ngerprint image is necessary because it may be lled with noises such as holes on
ridges and peaks on valleys. We utilize 1-D directional Gaussian lter at each pixel along its orientation to remove the noises.

3.2.1. Computation of ridge width Wr and valley

width Wv
Accurate estimation of the ridge width and
valley width is in fact a dicult task. We follow
Hongs method of computing ridge frequency to
obtain them. Firstly, the ngerprint image is divided into blocks of size w  w (w 16). For each
block centered at pixel Ii; j, an oriented window
of size l  w (l 32) is built and an x-signature
signal is computed. Here, the x-signature is the
average signal of projection of all the intensities in
the oriented window along the Ii; j orientation
(please refer to Hong et al. (1998) for more details
about the x-signature). The shape of the x-signature signal is similar to Fig. 1(a) or (b). Its rst and
second order derivatives indicate the ridge width
and valley width. Inaccurate ridge width and valley width could lead to inter-block non-uniform
image enhancement, since the estimation procedure is block-wise not pixel-wise. To compute
the ridge width and valley width from the discrete signal x-signature more accurately, we resort
to a tting method to acquire the rst and second
order derivatives. Based on the trade-o between
accuracy and eciency, the discrete Chebyshev
polynomials introduced by Haralick (1984) and
Tico and Kuosmanen (1999) are employed to
perform the tting. The zero crossings of the second order derivatives and magnitude of the rst

Fig. 5. The curve of F x; T1 ; T2 corresponding to dierent period T1 and T2 . Pixel Pa is located on a ridge, so T1 is set as the double of
ridge width 2Wr and T2 as the double of valley width 2Wv . Pixel Pb is on a valley, so T1 is set as 2Wv and T2 as 2Wr .

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order derivatives are together taken into account

to determine the ridge width and valley width.
In other words, the distance between two zero
crossings of the second order derivatives is regarded as the ridge width or valley width if the
magnitude of the corresponding rst order derivative is larger than a threshold. Then, the signs
of the second order derivatives specify whether it
is ridge or valley. Thereby, the information of
ridge width Wr and valley width Wv is associated
to each block. In application, ridge width and
valley width fall into a certain interval. If exceeding the interval, they are replaced by the mean
of those available in neighboring eight blocks.
3.2.2. Segmentation of ridges and valleys
As mentioned above, the functional form of
F x; T1 ; T2 depends on the characteristics of current pixels neighborhoods, and hence dierent
pixel corresponds to dierent F x; T1 ; T2 . For this
purpose, a previous step of determining whether
the pixel is located on a ridge or valley is necessary.
In our algorithm, we adopt a local threshold
method to roughly segment ridges and valleys.
Firstly, the mean m and standard deviation s of
intensities in each block that is divided in the
previous phase of estimating ridge width and valley width are calculated. Secondly, for each block
a local threshold thres m d  s is selected. Finally, each pixel at the block is classied into two
categories of ridge or valley by comparing its intensity with thres (d 0:2 in our experiments).
Generally speaking, this segmentation method
is rough and some pixels may be misclassied due
to the existence of noises. But in our experiments,
the performance is acceptable after Gaussian directional smoothing. For more accurate segmentation, the gradient at each pixel can also be
applied by topography methods (e.g. Wang and
Pavlidis, 1993; Haralick et al., 1983).

larger they are, the wider bandwidth is expected.

However, too wide bandwidth can unexpectedly
enlarge the noises, and too narrow bandwidth
tends to suppress some useful signals.
The value of ry determines the smoothing degree along the local orientation. Too large ry can
blur the minutiae. In our algorithms, ry is empirically set as 4.0.
Compared with ry , rx inherently plays a more
important role for the enhancement performance
and needs to be specied carefully. It inuences the
degree of contrast enhancement between ridges
and valleys. This selection involves a trade-o. If
rx is too large, the factor h0x in formula (5) will have
more high frequency components and even unstably oscillate near the origin, which leads to artifacts. On the other hand, if rx is too small, the
band pass associated with low pass lters will
evolve into a pure low pass one due to the overdomination of the Gaussian function in h0x x; T1 ;
T2 , which results in blurring edges (boundaries)
between ridges and valleys. Hong et al. (1998)
empirically selected rx as 4.0 and Greenberg et al.
(2000) specied it as 3.0 for his experimental images. Both of their parameter selections depend on
specic image database. It is known that the inuence of rx on the performance is related with T1
and T2 (only T in the TGF). If T1 and T2 are of
great variation in a ngerprint image, a constant
rx could result in a non-uniform enhancement,
even in some regions there is no enough enhancement but in others artifacts occurs.
The inconsistency of inter-block enhancement implied that ridges and valleys in dierent blocks are given non-uniform weights by lter
masks, since the ltering procedure is a convolution between images and lter masks. To
avoid the inconsistency, the MGF mask is assigned to each block by involving the local characteristics, T1 and T2 . The following constraints are
examined:

3.3. Determination of rx and ry

In the MGF, rx is the standard deviation of the
2-D Gaussian function along the x-axis and ry
along the y-axis. rx and ry control the spatial
frequency bandwidth of the MGF response. The



2
exp  2rx 2 cos 2px
dx
T1

x
 Q
2
2 =4
exp  2rx 2 cos 2pxT1T=4T
dx
2

R T1 =4
0

R T1 =4T2 =2
T1 =4

10

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J. Yang et al. / Pattern Recognition Letters xxx (2003) xxxxxx

3T1 =4T2 =2

T1 =4T2 =2

x2
exp  2
2rx

2px  T1 =2  T2 =2
 cos
T1

Table 1
Some rx s adopted in our experiments corresponding to dierent
T1 and T2


dx
0

11

Given a xed Q, rx corresponding to certain T1 and

T2 can be obtained by a numeric resolving method.
Therefore, constraints (10) and (11) provide a link
between the rx and T1 and T2 , that is, a link between rx and each block. Here, Q represents the
area proportion between the central dominant
component (near the origin, above the x-axis) and
its two close sidelobes (below the x-axis) in the
factor h0x (see Fig. 6). Moreover, constraints (10)
and (11) ensure that a MGF is a stable oscillator
near the origin (Q > 1, in the application), since
other sidelobes far away from the origin are suppressed. To achieve a uniform enhancement, Q is
specied as a global one. To speed up the ltering,
the rx s corresponding to dierent T1 and T2 are
computed o-line since the ridge width and valley
width are in a certain interval. Some rx s adopted in
our experiments are listed in Table 1 (Q 1:2).
From Table 1, T2 is subdivided into a smaller range
when T1 is small.

Fig. 6. The response of the factor h0x in formula (8) in spatial

domain. The central dominant component and its close sidelobes are marked.

T1

T2

rx

4
4
4
6
8
10
12
14
16

4; 12
14; 18
20; 28

1.5
1.6
1.8
1.8
2.5
2.7
3.0
3.5
4.0

3.4. Selection of convolution mask size

The implementation of enhancing ngerprint
images by the MGF or TGF is a convolution between an image and a part of lters coecient
matrix. The convolution mask size inuences the
performance of ltering and computational cost.
Too large mask size tends to burden the enhancement processing and meanwhile bring an
unstable factor when the area of the central
dominant component is less than the sum of that
of its two close sidelobes. But if it is too small, the
MGF or TGF collapses into a 2-D low pass lter
and the advantage of the band pass lter will be
lost. Hong et al. (1998) set the mask size as
2N 1  2N 1 (N 5 from his experience.
However, it is illogical that the mask size is still
constant when the width of ridges and valleys
varies. In contrast, we select the convolution mask
size as 2Ww 1  2Wh 1 for our MGF which
varies according to T1 and T2 . Here, 2Ww 1 is
set as T2 =2 T1 =2 T2 =2 orthogonal to the local
orientation (see Fig. 6). Actually, T2 =2 T1 =2
T2 =2 means Wv Wr Wv or Wr Wv Wr . Based
on the formulas (10) and (11), this selection ensures the area of the central dominant is larger
than the sum of that of its two close sidelobes
(represented by Q > 1). Thereby, the band pass
property is exerted and meanwhile both instability
and truncation errors are avoided.
From the above discussions, the convolution
mask size is integrated with the T1 , T2 and rx by the
global parameter Q to achieve consistent enhancement. Moreover, Wh is selected as a constant

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value 5.0 corresponding to ry specied in the

previous subsection.
4. Implementation
In the whole process of image enhancement, the
MGFs design is completed based on the analysis

in frequency domain, and images are enhanced in

spatial domain. Meanwhile, the coecients of the
Gaussian directional lter and MGF are completed o-line for speedup. In the TGF, Gabor
lter banks with dierent orientations are employed and their coecients are computed respectively. This entails a number of lters. In our

Fig. 7. Enhancement results corresponding to the ngerprint images of Fig. 8. The rst two columns are the results using the TGF with
dierent rx ; ry . The third column is the results by our MGF.

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algorithm, only coecients of the MGF with the

orientation / 0 are computed and image rotation is implemented instead of computing the
multi-directional MGFs. That is, MGF banks with
dierent rx s corresponding to dierent T1 and T2
are completed in advance. Then, image blocks with
the same size as that of the convolution mask are
rotated to the MGF orientation / 0. As a result,
our MGF enhancement achieves high eciency,
although we resort to multi-rx , multi-convolution
mask technique.
5. Experimental results
We test the eciency and robustness of our
algorithm using some ngerprint images, which
consist of our image database captured by an optical
live-scanned
equipment
400  376,
FVC2000 DB2 364  256 (touched sensor), database at the University of Bologna 256  256 and
NIST 512  512 (National Institute of Standard
and Technology) series ngerprint image database.
The parameters of our MGF are uniform to all the
images to validate our image-independent parameter selection scheme. Our experimental results
demonstrate that our MGF is more powerful in
ngerprint image enhancement than the TGF.
Some experimental results are illustrated in Fig. 7
corresponding to the original images in Fig. 8.
The experimental results reveal that the dicult
task in parameter selection of the TGF has been
resolved in our MGF. The spurious ridges and

11

valleys are avoided and uniform enhancement

performance is achieved. We also performed the
feature extraction and feature matching (Ratha
et al., 1996) on a combined ngerprint image
database from our database, FVC 2000 DB2 and
the database at University of Bologna. The ngerprint matcher reported by Ratha et al. (1996) is
a widely applied method. It employed the Hough
transform to align two minutia sets. From the
experimental results, our MGF makes the feature
extraction more reliable and feature matching
more accurate (see Table 2). Further investigating
our approaches and experiments, we learn that the
slightly higher computational cost of the MGF
primarily results from its larger convolution mask
size, since T2 =2 T1 =2 T2 =2 in the MGF is generally larger than the convolution mask width
2N 1 in the TGF for our tested images (see
Table 3). To achieve fast speed in large images,
convolution implementations in spatial domain
can be substituted by the multiplications in frequency domain.

Table 2
Fingerprint matching performance under the enhanced images
by the TGF and MGF
Filter

FAR
FRR

TGF
MGF

0.01%

0.05%

0.1%

0.15%

1%

5.9%
3.5%

5.3%
3.1%

4.3%
2.9%

3.9%
2.9%

3.1%
2.8%

Fig. 8. Some ngerprint images in our experiments. (a) is captured from an optical equipment. (b) is f23 of NIST-4. (c) is f09 of NIST4.

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J. Yang et al. / Pattern Recognition Letters xxx (2003) xxxxxx

Table 3
Comparison of time cost of ngerprint image enhancement
(based on P4 1.3 GHz, 128 M RAM PC)
Image resolution (pixel)

TGF (N 5,
ry 4:0) rx

Average time cost (s)

TGF

MGF

224  288
256  256
364  256
400  376

1.8
1.8
2.0
2.2

0.90
0.94
1.13
1.76

0.92
1.01
1.22
1.89

6. Conclusion
In this paper, a MGF has been proposed for
ngerprint image enhancement. The modication
of the TGF can make the MGF more accurate in
preserving the ngerprint image topography. And
a new scheme of adaptive parameter selection for
the MGF is discussed. This scheme leads to the
image-independent advantage in the MGF. Although there are still some intermedial parameters
determined by experience, a step of image normalization can compensate the drawback.
However, some problems need to be solved in
the future. A common problem of the MGF and
TGF is that both fail when image regions are
contaminated with heavy noises. In that case, the
orientation eld can hardly be estimated and accurate computation of ridge width and valley
width is prohibitively dicult. Therefore, a step of
segmenting these unrecoverable regions from the
original image is necessary, which has been explored in Hongs work to some extent.

Acknowledgements
The authors are highly grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their signicant and constructive critiques and suggestions, which improve the
paper very much. This work was partially supported by Hundred Talents Programs of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Natural Science
Foundation of China, Grant No. 60172056 and
697908001, and Watchdata Digital Company. We
acknowledge that the experiments in this research
are conducted on the ngerprint database from the
NIST, University of Bologna and FVC2000. We

would also like to give thanks to our colleagues in

National Laboratory of Pattern Recognition for
their stimulated discussions and comments on our
work.

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