Open Access
A survey of fingerprint classification Part II: experimental analysis and ensemble proposal
(Elsevier, 2015) Galar Idoate, Mikel; Derrac, Joaquín; Peralta, Daniel; Triguero, Isaac; Paternain Dallo, Daniel; López Molina, Carlos; García, Salvador; Benítez, José Manuel; Pagola Barrio, Miguel; Barrenechea Tartas, Edurne; Bustince Sola, Humberto; Herrera, Francisco; Automática y Computación; Automatika eta Konputazioa
In the first part of this paper we reviewed the fingerprint classification literature from two different perspectives: the feature extraction and the classifier learning. Aiming at answering the question of which among the reviewed methods would perform better in a real implementation we end up in a discussion which showed the difficulty in answering this question. No previous comparison exists in the literature and comparisons among papers are done with different experimental frameworks. Moreover, the difficulty in implementing published methods was stated due to the lack of details in their description, parameters and the fact that no source code is shared. For this reason, in this paper we will go through a deep experimental study following the proposed double perspective. In order to do so, we have carefully implemented some of the most relevant feature extraction methods according to the explanations found in the corresponding papers and we have tested their performance with different classifiers, including those specific proposals made by the authors. Our aim is to develop an objective experimental study in a common framework, which has not been done before and which can serve as a baseline for future works on the topic. This way, we will not only test their quality, but their reusability by other researchers and will be able to indicate which proposals could be considered for future developments. Furthermore, we will show that combining different feature extraction models in an ensemble can lead to a superior performance, significantly increasing the results obtained by individual models.
Open Access
A survey on fingerprint minutiae-based local matching for verification and identification: taxonomy and experimental evaluation
(Elsevier, 2015) Peralta, Daniel; Galar Idoate, Mikel; Triguero, Isaac; Paternain Dallo, Daniel; García, Salvador; Barrenechea Tartas, Edurne; Benítez, José Manuel; Bustince Sola, Humberto; Herrera, Francisco; Automática y Computación; Automatika eta Konputazioa
Fingerprint recognition has found a reliable application for verification or identification of people in biometrics. Globally, fingerprints can be viewed as valuable traits due to several perceptions observed by the experts; such as the distinctiveness and the permanence on humans and the performance in real applications. Among the main stages of fingerprint recognition, the automated matching phase has received much attention from the early years up to nowadays. This paper is devoted to review and categorize the vast number of fingerprint matching methods proposed in the specialized literature. In particular, we focus on local minutiae-based matching algorithms, which provide good performance with an excellent trade-off between efficacy and efficiency. We identify the main properties and differences of existing methods. Then, we include an experimental evaluation involving the most representative local minutiae-based matching models in both verification and evaluation tasks. The results obtained will be discussed in detail, supporting the description of future directions.
Open Access
A survey of fingerprint classification Part I: taxonomies on feature extraction methods and learning models
(Elsevier, 2015) Galar Idoate, Mikel; Derrac, Joaquín; Peralta, Daniel; Triguero, Isaac; Paternain Dallo, Daniel; López Molina, Carlos; García, Salvador; Benítez, José Manuel; Pagola Barrio, Miguel; Barrenechea Tartas, Edurne; Bustince Sola, Humberto; Herrera, Francisco; Automática y Computación; Automatika eta Konputazioa
This paper reviews the fingerprint classification literature looking at the problem from a double perspective. We first deal with feature extraction methods, including the different models considered for singular point detection and for orientation map extraction. Then, we focus on the different learning models considered to build the classifiers used to label new fingerprints. Taxonomies and classifications for the feature extraction, singular point detection, orientation extraction and learning methods are presented. A critical view of the existing literature have led us to present a discussion on the existing methods and their drawbacks such as difficulty in their reimplementation, lack of details or major differences in their evaluations procedures. On this account, an experimental analysis of the most relevant methods is carried out in the second part of this paper, and a new method based on their combination is presented.
Open Access
Enhancing multi-class classification in FARC-HD fuzzy classifier: on the synergy between n-dimensional overlap functions and decomposition strategies
(IEEE, 2014) Elkano Ilintxeta, Mikel; Galar Idoate, Mikel; Sanz Delgado, José Antonio; Fernández, Alberto; Barrenechea Tartas, Edurne; Herrera, Francisco; Bustince Sola, Humberto; Automática y Computación; Automatika eta Konputazioa
There are many real-world classification problems involving multiple classes, e.g., in bioinformatics, computer vision or medicine. These problems are generally more difficult than their binary counterparts. In this scenario, decomposition strategies usually improve the performance of classifiers. Hence, in this paper we aim to improve the behaviour of FARC-HD fuzzy classifier in multi-class classification problems using decomposition strategies, and more specifically One-vs-One (OVO) and One-vs-All (OVA) strategies. However, when these strategies are applied on FARC-HD a problem emerges due to the low confidence values provided by the fuzzy reasoning method. This undesirable condition comes from the application of the product t-norm when computing the matching and association degrees, obtaining low values, which are also dependent on the number of antecedents of the fuzzy rules. As a result, robust aggregation strategies in OVO such as the weighted voting obtain poor results with this fuzzy classifier. In order to solve these problems, we propose to adapt the inference system of FARC-HD replacing the product t-norm with overlap functions. To do so, we define n-dimensional overlap functions. The usage of these new functions allows one to obtain more adequate outputs from the base classifiers for the subsequent aggregation in OVO and OVA schemes. Furthermore, we propose a new aggregation strategy for OVO to deal with the problem of the weighted voting derived from the inappropriate confidences provided by FARC-HD for this aggregation method. The quality of our new approach is analyzed using twenty datasets and the conclusions are supported by a proper statistical analysis. In order to check the usefulness of our proposal, we carry out a comparison against some of the state-of-the-art fuzzy classifiers. Experimental results show the competitiveness of our method.
Open Access
INFFC: an iterative class noise filter based on the fusion of classifiers with noise sensitivity control
(Elsevier, 2015) Sáez, José Antonio; Galar Idoate, Mikel; Luengo, Julián; Herrera, Francisco; Automática y Computación; Automatika eta Konputazioa
In classification, noise may deteriorate the system performance and increase the complexity of the models built. In order to mitigate its consequences, several approaches have been proposed in the literature. Among them, noise filtering, which removes noisy examples from the training data, is one of the most used techniques. This paper proposes a new noise filtering method that combines several filtering strategies in order to increase the accuracy of the classification algorithms used after the filtering process. The filtering is based on the fusion of the predictions of several classifiers used to detect the presence of noise. We translate the idea behind multiple classifier systems, where the information gathered from different models is combined, to noise filtering. In this way, we consider the combination of classifiers instead of using only one to detect noise. Additionally, the proposed method follows an iterative noise filtering scheme that allows us to avoid the usage of detected noisy examples in each new iteration of the filtering process. Finally, we introduce a noisy score to control the filtering sensitivity, in such a way that the amount of noisy examples removed in each iteration can be adapted to the necessities of the practitioner. The first two strategies (use of multiple classifiers and iterative filtering) are used to improve the filtering accuracy, whereas the last one (the noisy score) controls the level of conservation of the filter removing potentially noisy examples. The validity of the proposed method is studied in an exhaustive experimental study. We compare the new filtering method against several state-of-the-art methods to deal with datasets with class noise and study their efficacy in three classifiers with different sensitivity to noise.