1134 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON IMAGE PROCESSING, VOL. 8, NO.

8, AUGUST 1999

subspaces: noise and signal. The signal subspace contains vectors

of signal and noise components, and noise subspace contains the
noise process only. The enhancement algorithm using block-adaptive
Wiener Filtering was then formulated to estimate the clean signal
from the signal subspace. The estimation criterion developed here
simulates the human visual system. Our experimental results show
that the signal subspace approach can be successfully applied to
enhance images corrupted by uncorrelated additive noise.
Fig. 1. Automatic fingerprint identification system.
REFERENCES

[1] R. C. Gonzalez and P. Wintz, Digital Image Processing, 2nd ed.

Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1987.
[2] T. S. Huang, G. T. Yang, and G. Y. Tang, “A fast two-dimensional
median filtering algorithm,” IEEE Trans. Acoust., Speech, Signal Pro-
cessing, vol. ASSP-27, pp. 13–18, Feb. 1979.
[3] H. L. Van Trees, Detection, Estimation and Modulation Theory, (Part I).
New York: Wiley, 1968.
[4] Y. Ephraim and H. L. Van Trees, “A signal subspace approach for
speech enhancement,” IEEE Trans. Speech Audio Processing, vol. 3,
pp. 251–266, July 1995.
[5] J. O. Limb, “Distortion criteria of the human viewer,” IEEE Trans. Syst.,
Man, Cybern., vol. SMC-9, pp. 778–793, Dec. 1979.
[6] B. Ramamurthi and A. Gersho, “Classified vector quantization of
images,” IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. COM-34, pp. 1113–1115, Nov.
1986.
[7] C. Bouman and K. Sauer, “A generalized Gaussian image model for
edge-preserving MAP estimation,” IEEE Trans. Image Processing, vol.
2, pp. 296–310, July 1993.
[8] W. H. Pun and B. D. Jeffs, “Adaptive image restoration using a
generalized Gaussian model for unknown noise,” IEEE Trans. Image
Processing, vol. 4, pp. 1451–1456, Oct. 1995.

Fig. 2. Portion of a typical fingerprint.

A Genetic Algorithm for the
Estimation of Ridges in Fingerprints
Ahmed S. Abutaleb and M. Kamel
Abstract—A genetic algorithm is developed to find the ridges in paper
fingerprints. It is based on the fact that the ridges of the fingerprints are
parallel. When scanning the fingerprint, line by line, the ideal noise-free
gray level distribution should yield lines of black and white. The widths
of these lines are not constant. The proposed genetic algorithm generates
black and white lines of different widths. The widths change until we get
the best match with the original fingerprint.
Index Terms— Edge detection, fingerprint, genetic algorithm, image
processing.
I. INTRODUCTION
Fingerprints have been used for personal identification since the
end of the 19th century. At the beginning, there was only one method
for fingerprint classification, the Henry method. It is based on the
shapes found in the fingerprint such as arches, whorls, loops, etc.
[14]. It is most suitable for manual manipulations.
Manuscript received June 20, 1995; revised May 28, 1997. The associate
editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for
publication was Prof. Patrick A. Kelly.
The authors are with the Systems and Bioengineering Department, Cairo
University School of Engineering, Giza, Egypt (e-mail: ataleb@idsc.gov.eg).
Publisher Item Identifier S 1057-7149(99)06115-1.
There is another popular method called the Galton method. It
is based on other features such as ridge endings, bifurcation, etc.
These features are called minutiae. This method is most suitable for
computer manipulations [3]. There are, in each fingerprint, around
100 minutiae; only 13–15 minutiae are needed to identify the person.
Minutiae detection is obtained after a lengthy process that involves
image enhancement, edge or ridge detection, binarization [1], thinning
[10], noise reduction, and finally minutiae detection.
The following are several problems involved with minutiae detec-
tion:
1) poor image quality of the fingerprint, especially when obtained
on paper;
2) over-inking or under-inking in many areas of the image;
3) old wounds or cuts in the hands appear as lines crossing the
fingerprint;
4) sweat affects the continuity of the ridges and cause them to
appear as discontinuous curves.
Most of the reported work, however, starts with high quality
images and then proceeds to find the features, minutiae [2], [8]. The
classification could be achieved through syntactic pattern recognition
or other approaches such as neural networks [12]. Little work has
been done to enhance the image and improve the quality of the
paper fingerprint. One could mention, however, the diffusion theory
approach [13] or the phase method [11].
The major problem with the existing edge detection operators is
that they do not take into consideration the special shape of the
fingerprints. Fingerprints are made of almost parallel lines (the ridges)

1057–7149/99$10.00  1999 IEEE

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON IMAGE PROCESSING, VOL. 8, NO. 8, AUGUST 1999 1135

Fig. 3. Measured and estimated gray level values for a scanned line in the fingerprint.

which appear as dark area on the paper. There is another white area
between every two ridges. Thus, when scanning row-wise, we have,
ideally, black lines followed by white lines of different widths. These
lines do not follow any regular pattern except that they are dark
followed by light lines.
The estimation of the line widths is a nonlinear estimation problem
that is not easy to solve. In this correspondence, we propose to
use an adaptive genetic algorithm to solve the nonlinear estimation
problem, and thus obtain the ridges in the fingerprint. This approach is
guaranteed to converge to the global minimum. This approach could
also be implemented on hardware since it is, basically, a parallel
algorithm.
Genetic algorithms have been around since the 1960’s [4]. Recently
there has been great interest in their use [9]. Genetic algorithms have
the following advantages [5]:
1) simple to use;
2) gradient is not calculated;
3) they have memory;
4) a priori information about the unknown parameters is easily
utilized as constraints;
A portion of a typical fingerprint is shown in Fig. 2 where many of
the mentioned problems are exemplified. If the ridges were accurately
obtained, the task of minutiae detection starts. It is these minutiae,
their number and location, that differentiate between the different
persons.
This work is concerned with preprocessing the image to delineate
the ridges. When scanning the image line by line, we should, ideally,
obtain black line followed by white line followed again by black
line and so on. Due to different forms of noise, we obtain a set of
gray levels for the pixels in the scanned line. Thus, a good algorithm
should be able to match a black and white set of lines to each scanned
line in the fingerprint. Notice also that a black line should follow a
white line, and the width of each is a finite number of pixels. This
is shown in Fig. 3.
Thus, if the gray level of the scanned line at the ith location is
defined as y (i), and if the assumed or estimated ideal black and white
lines are defined as, then the correlation coefficient, r, is calculated
through
I 1 0
[y (i) 0 yavg ][ y
^(i) 0 ^avg ]
y

5) global minimum is achieved in finite number of steps. i=0

r = (2.1)
The basic idea behind such an approach is survival of the fittest. 0
I 1 0
I 1
Starting initially with a set of random solutions, one proceeds by [y (i) 0 yavg ]
2 [^
y (i) 0 ^avg ]2
y

selective mating among them. This results in new sets of solutions i=0 i=0
or offsprings. The process continues until convergence is obtained.
where
This correspondence presents an adaptive genetic algorithm to find
the ridges in the fingerprint. It is adaptive because the probabilities 1
I 1 0 1
0
I 1
yavg = y (i) and ^avg
y = ^(i):
y (2.2)
of crossover and mutation, parameters of the genetic algorithm, are I I
i=0 i=0
estimated on line. It is shown that the proposed approach performs
well and is able to delineate the ridges, even at low SNR values (poor The correlation coefficient r is the optimization criterion. The
quality images). It is also compared to two used methods of high optimization algorithm changes the widths of the black and white
accuracy, Sobel operator and the phase method [11]. The adaptive lines to obtain a maximum value of r. Notice that r has a maximum
genetic algorithm outperforms both methods especially for real poor of 1 and a minimum of 01.
quality images.
In Section II, the ridge estimation problem is formulated. In III. PROBLEM SOLUTION USING THE
Section III, problem solution using the proposed genetic algorithm PROPOSED ADAPTIVE GENETIC ALGORITHM
is introduced. In Section IV, we present and compare some real
The evolutionary computation approach offers a variety of ways to
fingerprint results obtained through the above mentioned methods.
solve the different parameter optimization problems. Each problem
has its own unique tuning parameters. In the case of the ridge
II. PROBLEM FORMULATION identification, the tuning parameters are the probabilities of cross
An automatic fingerprint identification system block diagram is over and mutation.
shown in Fig. 1. The fingerprint is obtained in a digitized format by The solution steps for the estimation of ridges are as follows.
scanning a paper that contains the fingerprint. The paper fingerprint 1) Each scanned line in the image is made of black and white
has several problems: 1) the gray level is not homogenous; 2) over- segments. The width of each segment, in pixels, and its value,
or under-inking in different sections; and 3) writing in the fingerprint black or white ridge or valley, are two unknown parameters and
paper obscures the original fingerprint, etc. These problems cause represent a gene. The genes are not mixed together, i.e., each
the ridges to be not clear enough and preprocessing of the image is gene is also a chromosome. Each parameter is, independently,
needed. treated in terms of mating, cross over, and mutations. Each
1136
(a)
(c)
Fig. 4. Comparison between the estimates of the ridges: (a) original 642 64 frame; (b) magnitude of the Sobel operator; (c) ridges obtained by the
phase method; and (d) ridges obtained by the proposed adaptive genetic algorithm.
parameter is initialized at random with a population of size S .
Usually the population size is around 20 times the number
of unknown parameters. Thus, we have S vector solutions
for each scanned line in the image. Each parameter is coded
through the binary code, and each parameter has minimum
and maximum values. For example, it was observed that the
ridge/valley (segment) width lies between two and six pixels,
if the ridges are vertical 6=4. If the code is 8 b wide, then
00 000 000 corresponds to two, and 11 111 111 corresponds to
six. Notice that the black segment in the solution vector should
be followed and preceded by a white segment.
2) Fitness function calculations are performed for the S vector
solutions. For each solution, we calculate the correlation co-
efficient of (II.1) which represents the fitness function ffi .
The cross over and mutation probabilities are both changing
each iteration. They are considered as unknown parameters,
and thus, are members of the solution vector. Initially, like any
other parameter, they have random values that are used in the
mating process. In each iteration, the solution that yields the
maximum correlation value (maximum fitness function) has as
its members the values of the probability of cross over and the
probability of mutation. These values are the ones used in the
mutation to produce new offsprings.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON IMAGE PROCESSING, VOL. 8, NO. 8, AUGUST 1999
(b)
(d)
3) The probability of reproduction for the ith solution, pri , is
calculated according to the formula
ff
pri = S 01 i : (3.1)
ffs
s=0
If there is a great discrepancy between the maximum and
minimum values, other forms of the probability of reproduction
should be used.
4) At each iteration, two solutions, for each parameter, are picked
at random according to their probabilities which are defined
by (3.1). These two solutions represent the two parents. This
process is repeated S /2 times. Thus at the end we get a set of
S parents.
5) The two parents will mate through the procedure of cross over.
The mating will occur with probability pc . The location of the
crossover is chosen according to the uniform distribution. If the
size or code for each parent is 8 b, then the crossover position
would be between the second and the seventh position. The
result of the mating will be two offsprings. The two offsprings
represent two new solutions and they replace the two parents.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON IMAGE PROCESSING, VOL. 8, NO. 8, AUGUST 1999 1137

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

Fig. 5. Comparison between the estimates of the ridges for another frame: (a) original 64 2 64 frame, (b) magnitude of the Sobel operator, (c) ridges
obtained by the phase method, and (d) ridges obtained by the proposed adaptive genetic algorithm.

6) Mutation will be applied with probability pm . In this operation, The horizontal, W1, and the vertical masks, W2, of the Sobel
every single bit in every solution is subject to change with operator are defined as
probability pm .
7) The new S vector solutions are used with (2.1) to find their cor- +1 0 01 and 01 02 01
responding fitness functions and the whole process is repeated +2 0 02 0 0 0
again. +1 0 01 +1 +2 +1:
8) Stop the iterations when the number of iterations exceeds a
limit or when the correlation coefficient does not change. The If the original image is defined as I (i; j ), then the output of the
obtained best solution, with maximum fitness (correlation), is horizontal and vertical masks are defined by
the desired solution.
k =+1 k =+1
y1 (i; j ) = w1 (k1 ; k2 )I (i + k1 ; j + k2 ) (4.1)
k =01 k =01
IV. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS and
k =+1 k =+1
The fingerprint is scanned using an HP scanner with resolution of
y2 (i; j ) = w2 (k1 ; k2 )I (i + k1 ; j + k2 ):
300 dpi. A typical fingerprint image generates 320 2 320 matrix of
(4.2)
=01 k =01
256 gray levels, see Fig. 2. Each image is divided into several 64 2 64
k

frames. This has the effect of reducing computational time and

The edge strength image, y (i; j ), is obtained as
easing memory handling. Each 64 2 64 frame is studied, through
edge detection, to determine the dominant orientation. It is rotated,
if need be, to make the dominant orientation near vertical. Three y (i; j ) = y1 (i; j )2 + y2 (i; j )2 (4.3)
algorithms are compared: 1) the proposed adaptive genetic algo-
rithm, 2) the phase based algorithm [11], and 3) the Sobel operator and the phase or edge direction, is obtained as
[15].
In the phase-based method, a Sobel mask operator is applied to the y2 (i; j )
(i; j ) = arctan : (4.4)
image. Instead of using the magnitude of the masks, we use the phase. y1 (i; j )
The binary image is obtained by setting the phase angle higher than
to one and else to zero. It was found that this method gives higher It is the edge strength, when plotted, that constitutes the edges of
accuracy than the regular Sobel operator. the image, after a proper thresholding. In the phase based method,
1138
(a)
(c)
Fig. 6. Comparison between the estimates of the ridges for a third frame: (a) original 642 64 frame; (b) magnitude of the Sobel operator; (c) ridges
obtained by the phase method; and (d) ridges obtained by the proposed adaptive genetic algorithm.
it is  (i; j ) that has the information about the edges. The threshold
is set at  .
In the proposed adaptive genetic algorithm, as explained in
Section III, the minimum and maximum widths of the lines are set
to be two and six pixels, respectively. These values were obtained
from the scanned image under the correct orientation. Thus, in 64
2 64 image, there are a maximum of 32 lines and a minimum of
11 lines. In the presented results, the ridges are made to be vertical
or at most inclined by 45 . If no orientation is allowed, then the
maximum widths should be increased to 12 or more pixels. This will
only increase the computational time.
Three frames, each 64 2 64, are shown in Figs. 4–6. They all suffer
from the problems of over-inking and under-inking in parts of the
frames. The results of the edges obtained through the three methods
are shown. It is clear that the adaptive genetic algorithms performs
better than the other methods especially for areas of over/under
inking.
In summary, we have presented, in this paper, a new approach
to find the edges or ridges in the fingerprint. We used the fact that
a fingerprint is made of white followed by black lines of bounded
number of pixels. This enabled the problem formulation to be cast
as a parametric optimization problem. The parameters are the widths
of the black and white lines in the scanned line in the fingerprint.
The proposed adaptive genetic algorithm proved to be effective in
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON IMAGE PROCESSING, VOL. 8, NO. 8, AUGUST 1999
(b)
(d)
determining the ridges or edges in the fingerprint. Currently we
are investigating the problem of removing the writings from the
fingerprint.
REFERENCES
[1] A. Abutaleb, “Automatic thresholding of gray level pictures using two
dimensional entropy,” Comput. Vis., Graph., Image Process., vol. 47,
pp. 22–32, 1989.
[2] M. Chong, R. Gay, H. Tan, and J. Liu, “Automatic representation
of finger prints for data compression by B-spline functions,” Pattern
Recognit., vol. 25, pp. 1199–1210, 1992.
[3] M. Eleccion, “Automatic finger print identification,” IEEE Spectrum,
1973.
[4] L. Fogel, A. Owens, and M. Walsh, Artificial Intelligence Through
Simulated Evolution. New York: Wiley, 1996.
[5] D. Goldberg, Genetic Algorithms in Search, Optimization, and Machine
Learning. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1989.
[6] J. Holland, “Adaptive plans optimal for payoff-only environments,” in
Proc. 2nd Hawaii Int. Conf. Systems Sciences, 1969, pp. 917–920.
[7] , Adaptation in Neural and Artificial Systems, 2nd ed. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1992.
[8] A. Hrechak and J. McHugh, “Automated finger print recognition using
structural matching,” Pattern Recognit., vol. 23, pp. 893–904, 1990.
[9] “Special issue on genetic algorithms or evolutionary computation,” IEEE
Trans. Neural Networks, vol. 5, 1994.
[10] B. Jang and R. Chin, “One-pass parallel thinning analysis, properties
and quantitative evaluation,” IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Machine Intell.,
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON IMAGE PROCESSING, VOL. 8, NO. 8, AUGUST 1999
vol. 14, 1992.
[11] M. Kamel, A. Abutaleb, and M. Rasmy, “A gradient based preprocessing
algorithm for finger print identification,” in Proc. 1st Int. IEEE Conf.
Electronics, Circuits, and Systems, Cairo, Egypt, 1994, pp. 70–75.
[12] E. Mjoisness, “Neural networks, pattern recognition, and finger print
hallucination,” Ph.D. dissertation, Calif. Inst. Technol., Pasadena, CA,
1986.
[13] C. Price, W. Wambacq, and A. Oosterlinck, “Image enhancement and
analysis with reaction-diffusion paradigm,” Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng., vol.
137, pt. I, no. 3.
[14] K. Rao and K. Black, “Type classification of fingerprints: A syntactic
approach,” IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Machine Intell., vol. 2, 1980.
[15] M. A. Sid-Ahmed, Image Processing: Theory, Algorithms, and Archi-
tectures. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995.
On the Computational Aspects of Gibbs–Markov Random
Field Modeling of Missing-Data in Image Sequences
Dilip Krishnan, M. N. Chong, and Showbhik Kalra
Abstract— Gibbs-Markov random field (GMRF) modeling has been
shown to be a robust method in the detection of missing-data in image
sequences for a video restoration application. However, the maximum
a posteriori probability (MAP) estimation of the GMRF model requires
computationally expensive optimization algorithms in order to achieve
an optimal solution. The continuous relaxation labeling (RL) is explored
in this paper as an efficient approach for solving the optimization
problem. The conversion of the original combinatorial optimization into
a continuous RL formulation is presented. The performance of the RL
formulation is analyzed and compared with that of other optimization
methods such as stochastic simulated annealing, iterated conditional
modes, and mean field annealing. The results show that RL holds out
1139
solution is done via an appropriate optimization algorithm. There
exist a number of optimization algorithms that are well studied in the
literature. The commonly used algorithms [2] are stochastic simulated
annealing (SSA), iterated conditional modes (ICM), and mean field
annealing (MFA) [3]. In this paper, we investigate the use of relax-
ation labeling (RL) [4], [5]. RL was originally introduced for context
and constraint modeling in labeling problems, and it has seldom
been investigated for solving image-processing problems modeled by
GMRF. Section II presents the GMRF model used for missing-data
detection in image sequences. Section III outlines the formulation of
the optimization algorithm using relaxation labeling. The performance
of the proposed RL optimization algorithm is compared with other
optimization algorithms and presented in Section IV with respect
to quality and computational efficiency. Section V, summarizes the
work presented in this paper.
II. GMRF MODEL FOR THE DETECTION
OF MISSING-DATA IN IMAGE SEQUENCES
The detection of missing-data in image sequences is an important
problem in image sequence restoration and the GMRF model has
been used for the mentioned problem [1], [6]. Blotches in degraded
movie frames exhibit the temporal discontinuity characteristic, which
is commonly used for the detection of blotches. The detection model
developed by Chong et al. [6] addresses the problem of incorrect
detection due to poor motion compensation at the moving edges. It is
found that the degree of incorrect detection (at the moving edges) in
image sequences is reduced significantly by incorporating a moving-
edge detector into the MRF model. This edge preserving MRF model
[6] is adopted here for the detection of missing-data (blotches):
P (D = djX = x) = P (D = d)P (X = xjD = d)
01
[01 + (xi ; vi ))f (di )
promise as an optimization algorithm for problems in image sequence 1
= exp
processing. Z T i2S
Index Terms— Gibbs–Markov random field, missing-data detection,
relaxation labeling, simulated annealing.
I. INTRODUCTION
This paper discusses the development of an efficient Gibbs–Markov
random field (GMRF) model for the detection of missing data in
image sequences [1]. The main application of the proposed model
is the restoration of old degraded movies without causing distortions
to nondegraded areas of image frames. The general procedure in
the solution of a problem using GMRF modeling is to specify an
objective function, U (x); that quantifies the a posteriori assumptions
of the problem at hand. A Gibbs distribution can then be specified
as P (x) = e0U (x)=T where T is the global control parameter called
temperature and therefore P (x) is the a posteriori distribution.
The MAP estimation is carried out on P (x) to determine the
mode of the distribution. This mode represents the highest probability
(lowest energy) solution of the problem. The MAP estimation is
exceedingly tedious, especially as the number of unknowns in the
+ (2 + (xi ; vi )) (1 0 di )
+ (1 0 di )(xi 0 xi +v
2
) ] (1)
where S denotes the pixel lattice of two adjacent frames from a
sequence; xi is the observed intensity at site i of the lattice S ; D
denotes the blotch detection frame which is to be estimated using
MAP formulation; di = 1 indicates the presence of a blotch at site
i and di = 0 denotes no blotch at site i; X denotes the observed
image frame with the intensity of each pixel, xi ; xi+v denotes the
single motion-compensated neighbor pixel from the neighbor frame;
vi denotes the motion vector at site i which is computed using a
multiresolution full-search block matching algorithm; f (di ) is the
number of the four neighbors (first-order clique) of di with the same
value as di ;  (1) is the delta function, and function (xi ; vi ) is
a moving edge detector. The moving edge detector (xi ; vi ) can
be seen as a weighting function to alleviate the false detection of
the temporal discontinuity that is due to poor motion estimate; the
prior pdf will be weighted more than the likelihood function when
objective function increases. The attempt at finding an optimal MAP
Manuscript received September 9, 1997; revised June 19, 1998. The
associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving
it for publication was Dr. Mark R. Brown.
The authors are with the School of Applied Science, Nanyang Tech-
nological University, Singapore 639798, Republic of Singapore (e-mail:
asmnchong@ntu.edu.sg).
Publisher Item Identifier S 1057-7149(99)06007-8.
a moving-edge is found. ; 1 ; 2 are the parameters used in the
estimation.
An optimization algorithm will be required to solve (1). Nonde-
terministic (stochastic) optimization techniques such as SSA seek
to maximize the a posteriori probability based on the controlling
parameter (temperature) T: Deterministic optimization techniques
such as relaxation labeling, on the other hand, would deal with the

1057–7149/99$10.00  1999 IEEE