The use of fingerprints for identification has been

employed in law enforcement for about a century. A much

broader application of fingerprints is for personal

authentication, for instance to access a computer, a network, a

bank-machine, a car, or a home. The topic of this chapter is

fingerprint verification, where "verification" implies a user

matching a fingerprint against a single fingerprint associated

with the identity that the user claims. The following topics are

covered: history, image processing methods, enrollment and

verification procedures, system security considerations,

recognition rate statistics, fingerprint capture devices,

combination with other biometrics, and the future of fingerprint

verification.