0

How reliable is a mathematical model of a human fingerprint for identification?

I am looking for a way to uniquely identify individuals that is very reliable and easy to use that does not require storing actual biometric data. Storing the actual biometric data would seem to violate privacy. The method outlined in this article seems like it might be a good fit. I don't know the false positive / false negative rates.

Mathematical Models of Fingerprints on the Basis of Lines Description and Delaunay triangulation

schroeder
  • 123,438
  • 55
  • 284
  • 319
polcott
  • 93
  • 6
  • 2
    If storing actual biometrics violates privacy why do you think that storing a model of the fingerprint containing enough data to identify a human would not? A jpeg image or your mathematical model are just *representations* of an actual fingerprint, so they should be seen more or less the same. – Serge Ballesta Sep 18 '21 at 22:12
  • @SergeBallesta From a full copy of a fingerprint the fingerprint can be reproduced. A mathematical model of a fingerprint ignores most of the details, thus a full fingerprint cannot be derived from a mathematical model of a fingerprint. – polcott Sep 18 '21 at 22:24
  • 1
    Then it would be close to a hash. That is a non invertible representation of the fingerprint. Unsure about the legal aspects, but it would be interesting on a technical point of view because it would allow to remotely control a fingerprint without a full image. This is done for passwords for security reasons (less consequences for a user database leakage) and could not be done for fingerprints. But I am far from an expert on this point... – Serge Ballesta Sep 19 '21 at 08:49
  • @SergeBallesta I was looking at a hash initially. It may have too many false negatives. A set of hashes may be made to be nearly as reliable as the actual fingerprint. – polcott Sep 19 '21 at 11:14
  • @SergeBallesta The advantage of a mathematical model over a hash is that the model can be stochastic whereas the hash must be deterministic. The model could store the relative position of data points and still match with a slightly less than perfect mapping. – polcott Sep 20 '21 at 01:47
  • I know that. This is the reason why we cannot simply use hashes of fingerprints: each *observation* has slight differences, but it is enough for the hash not to match. – Serge Ballesta Sep 20 '21 at 06:33
  • @SergeBallesta What do you think about storing the mathematical model of the fingerprint? Hopefully this strikes the optimal balance between good matching and irreversibility. – polcott Sep 20 '21 at 15:23

0 Answers0