Robust biometric authentication system with a secure user template

Abstract Biometric feature based human authentication systems provide various advantages over the classical authentication systems. Out of numerous biometric features in a human body, the fingerprint is the most commonly used biometric feature for the authentication of a person. Typically, the fingerprint-based systems rely on minutiae points information and use it directly as a user template. Several studies have shown that the use of minutiae points directly as a user template is unreliable as it may lead to the reconstruction of the original fingerprint. As databases are vulnerable to attacks, it is important to secure fingerprint information. In this paper, we propose a technique in which a strong 3-dimensional template is created from the fingerprint of a user. From the minutiae points of the fingerprint, minutiae triplets are computed, through which a secured user template is generated. The user template developed using the proposed technique is found to be robust and shows good revocability, diversity, security, and performance. The experimental results obtained on various fingerprint databases are extremely encouraging and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique.