Fingerprint template protection using minutia-pair spectral representations

TL;DR

This paper proposes an improved spectral representation for fingerprint templates that enhances privacy protection while maintaining authentication accuracy, using a helper data system with zero-leakage quantisation and the Code Offset Method.

Contribution

It introduces a new spectral function capturing minutia orientation information and integrates it into a helper data system for fingerprint template protection.

Findings

Small performance penalty compared to unprotected spectral functions

Effective fingerprint authentication with enhanced privacy

New spectral function complements existing representations

Abstract

Storage of biometric data requires some form of template protection in order to preserve the privacy of people enrolled in a biometric database. One approach is to use a Helper Data System. Here it is necessary to transform the raw biometric measurement into a fixed-length representation. In this paper we extend the spectral function approach of Stanko and Skoric [WIFS2017], which provides such a fixed-length representation for fingerprints. First, we introduce a new spectral function that captures different information from the minutia orientations. It is complementary to the original spectral function, and we use both of them to extract information from a fingerprint image. Second, we construct a helper data system consisting of zero-leakage quantisation followed by the Code Offset Method. We show empirical data which demonstrates that applying our helper data system causes only a small performance penalty compared to fingerprint authentication based on the unprotected spectral functions.