Automatic Dataset Annotation to Learn CNN Pore Description for Fingerprint Recognition

High-resolution fingerprint recognition often relies on sophisticated matching algorithms based on hand-crafted keypoint descriptors, with pores being the most common keypoint choice. Our method is the opposite of the prevalent approach: we use instead a simple matching algorithm based on robust local pore descriptors that are learned from the data using a CNN. In order to train this CNN in a fully supervised manner, we describe how the automatic alignment of fingerprint images can be used to obtain the required training annotations, which are otherwise missing in all publicly available datasets. This improves the state-of-the-art recognition results for both partial and full fingerprints in a public benchmark. To confirm that the observed improvement is due to the adoption of learned descriptors, we conduct an ablation study using the most successful pore descriptors previously used in the literature. All our code is available at https://github.com/gdahia/high-res-fingerprint-recognition