An alignment-free fingerprint bio-cryptosystem based on modified Voronoi neighbor structures

• Published in: Pattern recognition Vol. 47; no. 3; pp. 1309 - 1320
• Main Authors: Yang, Wencheng, Hu, Jiankun, Wang, Song, Stojmenovic, Milos
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01.03.2014; Elsevier
• Subjects: Alignment; Alignment-free; Applied sciences; Bio-cryptosystem; Biometrics; Cryptography; Deviation; Distortion; Distortion robust; Exact sciences and technology; Fingerprint; Fingerprints; Fuzzy extractor; Image processing; Information, signal and communications theory; Modified Voronoi neighbor structure; Pattern recognition; Recognition; Security; Signal and communications theory; Signal processing; Telecommunications and information theory; Transformations; Fingerprint; Distortion robust; Bio-cryptosystem; Fuzzy extractor; Alignment-free; Modified Voronoi neighbor structure; Biometrics; Performance evaluation; Private life; Image processing; Sequence alignment; Singular point; High precision; Pattern recognition; Image matching; Rotational invariance; Security of data; Database; Cryptography; Automatic recognition
• ISSN: 0031-3203; 1873-5142
• DOI: 10.1016/j.patcog.2013.10.001

Bio-cryptography is an emerging security technology which combines cryptography with biometrics. A good bio-cryptosystem is required to protect the privacy of the relevant biometric data as well as achieving high recognition accuracy. Fingerprints have been widely used in bio-cryptosystem design. However, fingerprint uncertainty caused by distortion and rotation during the image capturing process makes it difficult to achieve a high recognition rate in most bio-cryptographic systems. Moreover, most existing bio-cryptosystems rely on the accurate detection of singular points for fingerprint image pre-alignment, which is very hard to achieve, and the image rotation transformation during the alignment process can cause significant singular point deviation and minutiae changes. In this paper, by taking full advantage of local Voronoi neighbor structures (VNSs), e.g. local structural stability and distortion insensitivity, we propose an alignment-free bio-cryptosystem based on fixed-length bit-string representations extracted from modified VNSs, which are rotation- and translation-invariant and distortion robust. The proposed alignment-free bio-cryptosystem is able to provide strong security while achieving good recognition performance. Experimental results in comparison with most existing alignment-free bio-cryptosystems using the publicly-available databases show the validity of the proposed scheme. •We propose an alignment-free fingerprint bio-cryptosystem based on modified VNSs.•The scheme is able to compensate the VNS change caused by large non-linear distortion.•Encrypted matching is performed and protected by the secure sketch, PinSketch.•The Experimental results show the validity of the proposed scheme.