Latent Fingerprint Matching: A Survey

Latent fingerprint has been used as evidence in the court of law for over 100 years. However, even today, a completely automated latent fingerprint system has not been achieved. Researchers have identified several important challenges in latent fingerprint recognition: 1) low information content; 2) presence of background noise and nonlinear ridge distortion; 3) need for an established scientific procedure for matching latent fingerprints; and 4) lack of publicly available latent fingerprint databases. The process of automatic latent fingerprint matching is divided into five definite stages, and this paper discusses the existing algorithms, limitations, and future research directions in each of the stages.