Robust Reversible Watermarking Application for Fingerprint Image Security

Abstract

Fingerprint biometric systems can automatically identify individuals based on their fingerprint characteristics. Different image watermarking schemes have been applied to fingerprint images for security and protection purposes. The previous schemes are either robust watermarking schemes or reversible watermarking schemes. In order to ensure the intactness of the minutiae, this work applies the robust reversible watermarking scheme for fingerprint images which can recover the original image after the watermark extraction process and provide robustness against different kinds of attacks. The proposed scheme embeds the identification number (ID) of the person in his fingerprint image to provide security while saving and exchanging the image. The scheme has two stages of security; in the first stage, the ID of the received image is extracted and compared with the saved ID in the database, if they are identical the system proceeds to the second stage in which the matching score between the received fingerprint and the saved fingerprint is calculated to authenticate the received image. The experimental results proved the efficiency of the proposed scheme in terms of visual quality, robustness, reversibility, and intactness of the fingerprint’s minutiae.