A novel fingerprint template protection and fingerprint authentication scheme using visual secret sharing and super-resolution

Fingerprint is the most recommended and extensively practicing biometric trait for personal authentication. Most of the fingerprint authentication systems trust minutiae as the characteristic for authentication. These characteristics are preserved as fingerprint templates in the database. However, it is observed that the databases are not secure and can be negotiated. Recent studies reveal that, if a person’s minutiae points are dripped, fingerprint can be restored from these points. Similarly, if the fingerprint records are lost, it is a permanent damage. There is no mechanism to replace the fingerprint as it is part of the human body. Hence there is a necessity to secure the fingerprint template in the database. In this paper, we introduce a novel fingerprint template protection and fingerprint authentication scheme using visual secret sharing and super-resolution. During enrollment, a secret fingerprint image is encrypted into n shares. Each share is stored in a distinct database. During authentication, the shares are collected from various databases. The original secret fingerprint image is restored using a multiple image super-resolution procedure. The experimental results show that the reconstructed fingerprints are similar to the original fingerprints. The proposed method is robust, secure, and efficient in terms of fingerprint template protection and authentication.