An Anisotropic Interaction Model for Simulating Fingerprints

TL;DR

This paper introduces an anisotropic interaction model incorporating stress fields to simulate the formation of stationary fingerprint patterns during pregnancy, capturing complex, realistic ridge structures.

Contribution

It presents a novel biologically motivated model that accounts for anisotropic forces influenced by stress tensors, enabling realistic simulation of fingerprint pattern formation.

Findings

The model produces stationary fingerprint-like patterns.

Rescaling parameters adjusts ridge distances proportionally.

Analytical and numerical studies confirm pattern stability.

Abstract

Evidence suggests that both the interaction of so-called Merkel cells and the epidermal stress distribution play an important role in the formation of fingerprint patterns during pregnancy. To model the formation of fingerprint patterns in a biologically meaningful way these patterns have to become stationary. For the creation of synthetic fingerprints it is also very desirable that rescaling the model parameters leads to rescaled distances between the stationary fingerprint ridges. Based on these observations, as well as the model introduced by K\"ucken and Champod we propose a new model for the formation of fingerprint patterns during pregnancy. In this anisotropic interaction model the interaction forces not only depend on the distance vector between the cells and the model parameters, but additionally on an underlying tensor field, representing a stress field. This dependence on the tensor field leads to complex, anisotropic patterns. We study the resulting stationary patterns both analytically and numerically. In particular, we show that fingerprint patterns can be modeled as stationary solutions by choosing the underlying tensor field appropriately.