Patent ID: 8077933

Claim:
A method of measuring how well fingerprints match comprising: comparing, by a processor of a machine, a pair of features from a first fingerprint with a pair of features from a second fingerprint, deriving a transformation that transforms the first pair of features of the first fingerprint to more closely match the first pair of features of the second fingerprint, and storing the transformation in a memory of the machine; repeating, by the machine, the comparing and the deriving of the transformation for each of a set of pairs of features on the first fingerprint and a set of pairs of features on the second fingerprint, therein forming a set of transformations; determining, by the machine, a degree to which each of the transformations of the sets of transformations match one another, and finding a subset of the set of transformations that is the largest group of transformations that match one another within a predetermined tolerance; computing a matching score for each transformation in the subset; combining, by the machine, the matching scores of each of the transformations of the subset to form a matching score representing a degree to which the first fingerprint matches the second fingerprint; and if the matching score for the fingerprints is above a threshold, indicating, by the machine, that the first and second fingerprint match.