Digitization of a Papillary Structure

A method and apparatus is described for recording and digitizing intensity pro-files (IP) of the papillary structure of the skin with high intensity resolution using sensors S with low intensity resolution. For this purpose, a plurality of digital image signals (DS, DS 1 , DS 2 ) of an identical subarea e.g. of a fingerprint are recorded, whereby the continuous intensity domain (KI) of the fingerprint is scanned in different intensity resolutions, and/or different portions (A 1 , A 2 ) of said continuous intensity domain (KI) are mapped to discrete intensity domains of the single digital image signals (DS, D 1 , DS 2 ). By the pixelwise combination of all digital image signals (DS, DS 1 , DS 2 ), a digital fingerprint image signal (PS) is finally produced whose discrete intensity domain (DI) represents a larger portion of the continuous intensity domain (KI) of the fingerprint and/or has a higher resolution intensity than each single one of the digital image signals (DS, DS 1 , DS 2 ).