International Journal of Innovation and Scientific Research ISSN 2351-8014 Vol. 10 No. 2 Oct. 2014, pp. 458-465 © 2014 Innovative Space of Scientific Research Journals http://www.ijisr.issr-journals.org/ Corresponding Author: Anju Mohan 458 Touchless Fingerprint recognition using MATLAB Anju Mohan 1 and Prof. Shilpa P. Kodgire 2 1 Electronics & Communication Department, M.I.T College, Aurangabad, BAMU, Maharashtra, India 2 Associate professor, Electronics & Communication Department, M.I.T College, Aurangabad, BAMU, Maharashtra, India Copyright © 2014 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT: Fingerprint recognition is the reliable and oldest biometrics used for personal identification. Many sensors were developed for fingerprint recognition systems in which the user’s finger print is placed on a sensor. Due to this contact the input fingerprint from the same finger can be different and there can be fingerprint issues which can lead to forgery and hygienic problem. For this reason touchless fingerprint recognition has been developed in which the fingerprint is acquired using a high resolution webcam. The acquired images are subjected to pre-processing steps and the region of interest is extracted. Minutia features are extracted from the fingerprint image and matching is based on the number of minutia pairings among two fingerprints to be matched. The project is coded in Matlab. KEYWORDS: Biometric, Fingerprint, Minutia, Crossing Number, FAR, FRR. 1 INTRODUCTION Human beings possess psychological and behavioural characteristics. The measure of these characteristics is called Biometrics. Biometrics is used for personal identification and verification. Voice, lip movements, hand geometry, face, odour, gait, iris, retina, fingerprint are the most commonly used authentication methods. Biometrics is actively growing area of research. The driving force of the progress in this field is, above all, the growing role of the Internet and electronic transfers in modern society. The biometrics has a significant advantage over traditional authentication techniques namely passwords, PIN numbers, smartcards etc. due to the fact that biometric characteristics of the individual are not easily transferable, are unique of every person, and cannot be lost, stolen or broken. The choice of Biometrics depends on accuracy, user acceptance, cost and implementation time and level of security required. Of all the biometric based recognition systems, fingerprint based recognition systems is one of the oldest and most reliable biometric used for personal identification. A fingerprint is the pattern of friction ridges on a human finger, which provides increased friction for gripping. A fingerprint consists of ridges and valleys. Fingerprints are not distinguished by ridges and furrows but by minutia which are abnormal points on the ridges. Among the variety type of minutia, two are mostly significant and in heavy usage: one is called termination, which is the immediate ending of a ridge; the other is called bifurcation, which is the point on the ridge from which two branches derive. The characteristics of fingerprint are: i. A fingerprint is an individual characteristic: No two persons, even identical twins does not have similar fingerprint pattern. The probability of two fingers being same is 1 in 1.9×10 15 [1, 2, and 3]. ii. Fingerprints remains unchanged during a lifetime. Only a very deep cut would result in changes in a fingerprint. iii. Fingerprint has general ridge patterns that permit them to be classified.