The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 21, 2000
Filed:
Dec. 13, 1996
Andrea Califano, New York, NY (US);
Scott Eric Colville, Madison, WI (US);
Robert Steven Germain, Tuckahoe, NY (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
The method and apparatus of the present invention provide for automatic recognition of fingerprint images. In an acquisition mode, subsets of the feature points for a given fingerprint image are generated in a deterministic fashion. One or more of the subsets of feature points for the given fingerprint image is selected. For each selected subset, a key is generated that characterizes the fingerprint in the vicinity of the selected subset. A multi-map entry corresponding to the selected subset of feature points is stored and labeled with the corresponding key. In the recognition mode, a query fingerprint image is supplied to the system. The processing of the acquisition mode is repeated in order to generate a plurality of keys associated with a plurality of subsets of feature points of the query fingerprint image. For each key generated in the recognition mode, all entries in the multi-map that are associated with this key are retrieved. For each item retrieved, a hypothesized match between the query fingerprint image and the reference fingerprint image is constructed. Hypothesized matches are accumulated in a vote table. This list of hypotheses and scores stored in the vote table are preferably used to determine whether a match to the query fingerprint image is stored by the system.