This would be a suitable textbook for a course in biometric or pattern recognition; it will be a useful reference for all biometric security professionals and researchers. The four coauthors have a distinguished combination of academic and professional experience. A DVD is included with the book, and contains a demonstration version of the synthetic fingerprint image generation (SFINGE) software, and databases used in several fingerprint verification competitions. The style of the book is informal, yet comprehensive and advanced.

An introduction is given to automated fingerprint recognition, as well as an in-depth survey of the current state-of-the-art, an overview of recent advances in creating and securing fingerprint identification systems, and a variety of professional techniques. To accomplish these objectives, the book is organized into four parts: fingerprint sensing; fingerprint representation, matching, and classification; advanced topics, including synthetic fingerprints, multimodal biometric systems, and fingerprint variability; and securing fingerprint systems. As background material, the book includes references to basic readings and introductory surveys in pattern recognition and image processing.

To complement the text, there are numerous figures with supporting graphs and charts, as well as an extensive bibliography and index. One potential weakness of the book as a textbook is the lack of student exercises and problems. This is at best a minor point, since each chapter contains a helpful introduction and summary. Overall, readers will be pleased with the style and substance of this book.