Real time ridge orientation estimation for fingerprint images

Fingerprint verification is an important bio-metric technique for personal identification. Most of the automatic verification systems are based on matching of fingerprint minutiae. Extraction of minutiae is an essential process which requires estimation of orientation of the lines in an image. Most of the existing methods involve intense mathematical computations and hence are performed through software means. In this paper a hardware scheme to perform real time orientation estimation is presented which is based on pipelined architecture. Synthesized circuits proved the functionality and accuracy of the suggested method.