Performance Evaluation of Image Enhancement Techniques on Transfer Learning for Touchless Fingerprint Recognition

Fingerprint recognition remains one of the most reliable biometric technologies due to its high accuracy and uniqueness. Traditional systems rely on contact-based scanners, which are prone to issues such as image degradation from surface contamination and inconsistent user interaction. To address these limitations, contactless fingerprint recognition has emerged as a promising alternative, providing non-intrusive and hygienic authentication. This study evaluates the impact of image enhancement tech-niques on the performance of pre-trained deep learning models using transfer learning for touchless fingerprint recognition. The IIT-Bombay Touchless and Touch-Based Fingerprint Database, containing data from 200 subjects, was employed to test the per-formance of deep learning architectures such as VGG-16, VGG-19, Inception-V3, and ResNet-50. Experimental results reveal that transfer learning methods with fingerprint image enhance-ment (indirect method) significantly outperform those without enhancement (direct method). Specifically, VGG-16 achieved an accuracy of 98% in training and 93% in testing when using the enhanced images, demonstrating superior performance compared to the direct method. This paper provides a detailed comparison of the effectiveness of image enhancement in improving the accuracy of transfer learning models for touchless fingerprint recognition, offering key insights for developing more efficient biometric systems.