Patent ID: 7596248

Claim:
A method of identifying a person by fingerprint/toeprint recognition, comprising the steps of: producing a digital photograph having a digitized image of a fingerprint/toeprint or part of a fingerprint/toeprint present on a surface of an object; analyzing said digitized image of the fingerprint/toeprint; detecting characteristic points of the fingerprint/toeprint in the digitized image; exchanging detected digital data of the detected characteristic points with a data bank in which digital data of the characteristic points of a multiplicity of fingerprints/toeprints are stored in a memory, said stored digital data corresponding to plane images of the multiplicity of fingerprints/toeprints; comparing the detected digital data of the abovementioned detected characteristic points with the digital data stored in the memory of the data bank; and identifying a person having said fingerprint/toeprint as a result of the above comparing step, said method further comprising, where the fingerprint/toeprint is present on a curved surface, the steps of selecting a pre-established model of a curved semicylindrical or semiconical surface of revolution having a shape corresponding or close to a shape of the curved surface or of a portion of the curved surface on which the fingerprint/toeprint is present, sending information about respective positions of two diametrically opposed generatrices of the curved surface which are visible in the digitized image to an algorithm processing device, whereby the algorithm processing device deduces from the information relevant geometrical characteristics of the curved surface, and transforming, using the algorithm processing device for a plane projection, the digitized image into a corrected digitized image with a distortion level below a predetermined threshold, said corrected digitized image showing the characteristic points of said fingerprint/toeprint in a plane, whereby said corrected digitized image is used for detecting the characteristic points of the fingerprint/toeprint in the detecting step and for identifying the person in the indentifying step.