Statistical analyses of fingerprint growth

Abstract

We study the effect of growth on the fingerprints of adolescents, based on which we suggest a simple method to adjust for growth when trying to retrieve an adolescent's fingerprint in a database years later. Here, we focus on the statistical analyses used to determine how fingerprints grow: Procrustes analysis allows us to establish that fingerprints grow isotropically, an appropriate mixed effects model shows that fingerprints essentially grow proportionally to body height. The resulting growth model is validated by showing that it brings points of interest as close as if both fingerprints were taken from an adult. Further details on this study, in particular results when applying our growth model in verification and identification tests, can be found in C. Gottschlich, T. Hotz, R. Lorenz, S. Bernhardt, M. Hantschel and A. Munk: Modeling the Growth of Fingerprints Improves Matching for Adolescents, IEEE Transations on Information Forensics and Security, 2011 (to appear).