open the device or remove some parts to properly estimate this characteristic by measuring the scanner image the target). Modulation Transfer Function (MTF).
Estimating Image Focusing in Fingerprint Scanners Matteo Ferrara, Annalisa Franco, Davide Maltoni C. d. L. Scienze dell 'Informazione - Universita di Bologna, via Sacchi 3, 47023 Cesena - ITALY E-mail. [ferrara, franco, maltoni}@csr. unibo. it Abstract This work is motivated by the need of simple and practical techniques to evaluate fingerprint scanners for non-AFIS applications. One of the characteristics that has to be considered for the evaluation of a fingerprint scanner is the capability of providing well focused images. It is common practice to indirectly estimate this characteristic by measuring the scanner Modulation Transfer Function (MTF). Unfortunately this requires a rather complex setup and specific expensive targets. In this paper a novel index (TSI) is proposed to simply evaluate finger image focusing. The method is based on the measurement of the steepness of the ridgelvalley transitions of the fingerprint impressions. The experimental results confirm the strict relation between the proposed index and the ability of a scanner to clearlyfocus thefingerprint.
certain amount of blurring because of technologyspecific reasons. According to the FBI/NIST specifications [1] [3] the image focusing can be indirectly estimated through the MTF or CTF (as described in section 2), but these require expensive calibrated targets and complex testing procedures (e.g. it is sometime necessary to open the device or remove some parts to properly image the target). An alternative to MTF/CTF is using the Image Quality Measure (IQM) proposed in [4]. IQM is a good quality measure and demonstrated to be highly correlated to the MTF. On the other hand it has been developed for the evaluation of generic digital images and therefore it takes into account several factors, some of which are not directly applicable to the analysis of fingerprint images (e.g. the directional scale factor). In this paper we propose a novel index (named TSJ) to simply evaluate finger image focusing. The method is based on the measurement of the steepness of the ridge/valley transitions of the fingerprint impressions
1. Introduction For the testing and certification of FBI-compliant
and does not require any specific setup.
The paper is organized as follows. In section 2 and 3 the MTF/CTF and IQM measures are briefly presented. The proposed approach is described in detail in section 4. Section 5 presents the experiments carried out and fially, section 6 draws some
fingerprint scanners for AFIS applications, appendix F and G of [1] provide clear specifications. Unfortunately the testing procedure is rather complex and requires specific expensive targets. More recently, within the scope of the PIV program, NIST and FBI released a new set of specifications [3], where some
(TSJ)
conclusions.
constraints have been relaxed, but carrying out the test
2. MTF and CTF measures
is still difficult and requires specific setups. The need for simple and practical techniques to evaluate the quality of fingerprint scanners is the main motivation of this work. Several factors have to be considered for a comprehensive evaluation, such as the deviation with respect to the nominal resolution, the geometric accuracy, the signal to noise ratio, etc. This work focuses on one of these factors, i.e. the ability of the scanner to clearly focus the fingerprint. A fingerprint image could be out of focus for two main reasons: i) the device internal sampling resolution is not sufficient to transfer the fine details of the pattern (i.e. Nyquist sampling theorem); ii) some components of the device (e.g. a lens) produce a
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The modulation transfer function (MTF) denotes the ability of an imaging system to transfer the object contrast (i.e. the signal difference between dark and light areas) to the captured image. The system MTF can be computed from an impulse function input such as a point source of light, a narrow line, or a sharp edge. It can also be computed from non-impulse inputs such as a sine wave, square wave, or even from a random pattern. The evaluation of the spatial frequency response (SFR) for fingerprint scanners, according to the FBI/NIST recommendations, requires the use of continuous tone sine wave targets. A typical target, including sine waves of increasing frequencies is shown in Figure 1.
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scenes and a filter developed to account for imaging system noise. The IQM can be derived as follows: 1 /T 0.5 2To ,,0 2Q M S ES(O1).W(p).A2(T.p).P(p,O) 0 ar po w o a f t where o,O are the polar coordinates of the spatial frequency, I2 is the image size in pixel, S(01 ) is the directional scale factor, W(p) is a modified Wiener 2 n system and P2 (p, o) is the brightness normalized
The MTF for a given frequency is defined as: MTF = peak image modulation target modulation The target modulation is a value provided by the target manufacturer, while the image modulation is computed as:
maximum -minimum maximum+minimum where the maximum and minimum values correspond respectively to the gray level value of the peak and adjacent valley in each sine wave period.
image power spectrum. IQM is an objective image quality measure, which ~~~~~~~~~~~~demonstrated to be highly correlated with visual quality assessments.
N
4. TSI (Top Sharpening Index) Figure 1. Example of a sine
wave
to calculate MTF.
consideration that if a fingerprint image is well
target used
focused, then its ridge/valley transitions are sharp.
Hence focusing can be evaluated by measuring the response of the image to a sharpening filter. This is not a novel idea, and is often used for the development of auto-focusing systems (e.g. [5]). On the other hand, we need a specific implementation of sharpening in order to achieve invariance with respect to the particular pattern sensed. In other words, the measured focusing level must be related only to the scanner characteristics and not to the specific fingerprint acquired. In
If the scanner cannot obtain adequate tonal response from this kind of target, a bi-tonal bar target shall be used to measure the SFR, denoted as Contrast Transfer Function (CTF) measurement. In this case the modulations are determined in image space, normalized by the image modulation at zero frequency'. The scanner CTF at each frequency is then defined as: CTF -
particular it must be invariant to: * the frequency of a ridge/valley cycle2. In fact the frequency can vary from finger to finger and also
peak image modulation zero frequency image modulation
3. IQM Image Quality Measure (IQM) has been proposed in [4], based on the digital image power spectrum of arbitrary scenes. This measure, differently from MTF, does not require imaging specific targets. IQM is derived from the normalized 2D image power spectrum, based on the assumption that the equational form of the imaging system input scene power spectrum is invariant from scene to scene [4]. This invariance is a necessary assumption for the technique to work when only the output image is available for measurement. The analysis of power spectrum allows to identify image degradation.
IQM incorporates several factors: a representation of the human visual system, an approach to account for directional differences in scale for obliquely acquired
1 In this context, "zero frequency" refers to any single or multiple bar pattern whose spatial frequency is no greater than 300 of the scanner output Nyquist frequency.
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from zone to zone in the same
finger [2];
the gray level range in the image. The aim is to estimate the steepness of the ridge/valley transitions and not its amplitude. TSI has been studied to fulfill the above requirements which are not satisfied by the MTF, CTF and IQM measures. Let I be an image of size uxv pixels, totally covered by a fingerprint pattern. The proposed index is calculated as follows: 1. Gray level normalization. This step is needed to make TSI independent on the gray level range of the image. The normalized image In is obtained by applying a contrast stretching function to the gray level value gi of each pixel of the original image I: f(g)=255 g, -min(I) max(I) - min(I) *
2 Frequency is the measurement of the number of ridge/valley cycles per millimeter.
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where min(I) and max(I) represent respectively the minimum and maximum gray level value of the image I determined by discarding the 1% of the lowest and highest values (to prevent outliers affecting the normalization too much). 2. Image convolution with a sharpeningfilter. The normalized image In is convolved with a sharpening filter F thus obtaining a new image Ic n *F:
=|I
8
f=-255.p.u.v
Fjjijjjij
F =- ΒΆ0Ii1
i8ili
L
9
F
_1F i1F
where * denotes the image convolution operation and the operator ||replaces each element of the convolved image with its absolute value. Taking the absolute value of the filter response is necessary since both high (positive) and low (negative) responses denote high steepness. From the example shown in Figure 2 it is evident that Ic pixels assume high values in correspondence of I edges.
The procedure above described is based on the assumption that the image I is totally covered by a fingerprint pattern. In order to calculate a global TSI value for a generic fingerprint image, a partitioning into non-overlapping sub-windows of fixed size and a fingerprint area segmentation (i.e. separation of the foreground from the background) is necessary. The partitioning is useful for two reasons: a) it makes TSI independent of the image size; b) it allows to estimate TSI also locally (e.g. the in optical fingerprint scanners is usually l- |focusing better in the central region than near the borders).
The global TSI is obtained by averaging the TSI scores of each sub-image. The segmentation is required since the background does not contain significant edges and averaging over the whole image would produce a lower score. Several segmentation algorithms have been proposed for fingerprints [2]. In this paper a simple method based on the gray level variance is used. In Figure 3 an example of fingerprint area segmentation is reported.
Figure 2. A fingerprint image and the result
of the convolution Ii, 3. TSI computation. TSI is calculated by accumulating the values of the top p% pixels of Ic (i.e., those with highest
intensity): this is the reason why we are proposing the name Top Sharpening. Considering only the top percentage of sharpening responses allows to achieve invariance with respect to the ridge/valley frequency: in fact, provided that a sufficient number of edges are present in the image, further increasing the number of edges does not increase
(a)
Figure 3. Fingerprint image (a), and the related segm ene wim e) wher th sub-wndoS/ (32x32 pixels wide) used to calculate TSlare shown (b).
the TSI value. On the other, the value ofp must be tuned according to the scanner nominal output resolution. The invariance has been experimentally verified by fixing the percentage as follows: 100 at 500dpi resolution and n 500O atp. 1000dpi. For
5. Experimental results
To isset oexperimenthe beencarie otth aimed to evaluate the TSI invariance with
former
respect to the ridge/valley frequency and to the gray level range; the latter to verify the relation between TSI value and the actual device focusing. For all the the sub-windows size has been following
the pret cnb differied y resolutions la ition . rcesting Te v e
different
experiments
is normalized in the range [0; 1] by dividing it by a factor f representing the theoretical maximum sharpening value:
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fixedto32x32pixels.
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0 17813l0.17852
5.1 Independence of ridge/valley frequency and gray level range For this set of experiments two kinds of images have been used: Bar4target images of varying frequency and gray level range. These computer generated targets exhibit a fixed steepness for the transition between two contiguous bars (see Figure 4). * Fingerprint images of size 400x560 pixels, 569dpie acquired with a high quality optical sensor
(see Figure 5).
Figure 4. Bar targets with different ridge/valley frequency and gray level range (first and The
ice wing Finge characteristics: high (a) and low (b) frequency, small (c) and large (d) gray level range. For 5. Figeprn Figuren imagess wihdffrn each the TSI value is reported as well. image
5.
sectiond(t row).d Thele potsIvalef forialth tallt secion(latargw.TetiSI 0.18971. targetspisr0t18971d plots of a horizontal aseondrw)adieated
In Figure 4 a subset of the bar target images of different frequency and gray level range is shown. The associated plot of a horizontal section of the targets is reported in the last row. Different columns refer to different ridge/valley frequencies (from left to right the frequencies range from 1 to 4). The chosen values cove thediffrentfreqencis prsentin hman fingerprints [2]. All the bar targets obtain the same TSI value, thus demonstrating the invariance to frequency and gray level range. This property has been confirmed by the experiments carried out on fingerprint images. The fingerprints in different frequencies and Figure 5, characterized ' .by . . gray level range, achieve very similar TSI values,
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52Reaintthdvcefusg
5.Reaintthdvcefusg In order to verify the relation between TSI and the of a scanner to clearly focus a fingerprint the ability followin experiment has been carried out: the TSI h g been calculated for a set of value has images of the same finger acquired by using an optical sensor while the lens focus was manually degraded (by gradually moving the lens away from the ideal position). In 6 a sequence of images progressively more out Figure of focus is reported. In addition the related plot of a ridge/valley fingerpt section is shown to p rove that g p blurring gproduces a steepness reduction of the ~~~~~~~~the ridge/valley transitions. Finally the TSI value of each image is given. The experimental results prove the strict relation between the proposed index and the device focusing.
yf
33
00,18136
0 ,15084 12264 0p
0t 10024
0,08379
Figure 6. In the first row a sequence of progressively defocused images of the same finger is shown. Plots of a fingerprint section and the TSI values are given in the second row.
6. Conclusions In this work a new quality index to evaluate the fingerprint scanners focusing has been proposed. The preliminary experiments confirned the efficacy of TSI and its invariance with respect to the ridge/valley frequency and to the gray level range. As future work an extensive experimentation will be carried out with the aim of defining more precise guidelines to systematically use TSI in the evaluation of non-AFIS fingerprint acquisition devices.
7. References [1] Department of Justice F.B.I., "Electronic Fingerprint Transmission Specification", CJIS-RS-0010 (V7), 1999. [2] D. Maltoni, D. Maio, A.K. Jain and S. Prabhakar, Handbook of Fingerprint Recognition, Springer (New York), 2003.
[3] National Institute of Standards and Technology, "Personal Identity Verification (PIV) of Federal Employees and Contractors", FIPS PUB 201, 2005. [4] N.B. Nill, B.H. Bouzas, "Objective Image Quality Measure Derived from Digital Image Power Spectra", Optical Engineering, vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 813-825, 1992. [5] X. Zhang, N. Fukuda, Y. Obuchi, T. Kambe, N. Kubo, H. Kawamura, I. Suzuki, "A signal processing system on chip for digital cameras", IEEE Annual Conference on Industrial Electronics Society, vol. 2, pp. 1243 - 1248, 2000.
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