Visual cryptography applied to fingerprint features as a solution for pre-alignment

Abstract

Visual cryptography enables to derive from an image two shares that give separately no information on the original image while leading back to the image by superimposition of the shares. In this work, we apply this technique to fingerprint features for enabling an alignment of a reference and a fresh images. The idea is to use an encrypted share derived from the reference data as a kind of reference grid for pre-alignment of the fresh data on it. Following the principle of visual cryptography, it also ensures a storage protection when data are stored in separate locations.