The method extracts the minutiae from the enhanced image. This method extracts the ridge endings and bifurcations from the skeleton image by examining the local neighbourhood of each ridge pixel using a 3×3 window. The method used for minutiae extraction is the crossing number (CN) method. This method involves the use of the skeleton image where the ridge flow pattern is eight-connected. The minutiae are extracted by scanning the local neighbourhood of each ridge pixel in the image using a 3×3 window. CN is defined as half the sum of the differences between the pairs of adjacent pixel.