Fingerprint enhancement in Python

Question

I'm doing fingerprints recognition as a project for computer vision classes in Python.

For preprocessing of the images I used Gabor filter, then Gaussian blur, then Otsu binarization and I got something like this (original image on the left, processed on the right):

Then I'm doing skeletonization and I think that the image is too detailed. I would like to get something like this (the first image is the one I have now, second - the one I would like to get):

When I did thining on the second picture, it looked much better than on the image I have now. Do you have any ideas what I can do using OpenCV and Python to achieve that (to get an image similar to the one on the right)?

I would like to especially get rid of those little thorns and to smooth the edges.

Answer 1

It seems you got inverted binary image after Otsu, ridges became valleys.

Those small lines you want to remove, are actually gaps along ridge lines, which should be removed by gabor. You can apply Gabor filter again or adjust the parameter.