Fingerprint recognition is one of the most common techniques used for biometric identification. Currently fingerprint technology is suitable to recognize users with high accuracy and low execution times using microprocessors able to solve algorithms with high-computational cost.

A fingerprint is comprised of ridges and valleys. The ridges are the dark area of the fingerprint and the valleys are the white area that exists between the ridges. Many classifications are given to patterns that can arise in the ridges and some examples are given in the figure to the right. These points are also known as the minutiae of the fingerprint. The most commonly used minutiae in current fingerprint recognition technologies are ridge endings and bifurcations because they can be easily detected by only looking at points that surround them.