Processing of fingerprints influenced by skin diseases

Fingerprint technology has been evolving and nowadays fingerprint recognition systems have been applied in a variety of areas. They are used not only in forensics for criminalistic purposes but also as an access method to facilities, computers, mobile phones or electronic banking; as a data protection method and for civil identification (passports, driver licenses, national IDs), not to mention applications in government, commercial financial sector, education or health care. This technology has been well accepted by people and we use it on a daily basis. However, there is a significant number of people who cannot use fingerprint systems as easily because their fingertip skin is affected by some kind of skin disease. As these systems count heavily on the structure of an individuals fingertip papillary line pattern that positively determines their identity, people suffering from skin diseases might be discriminated against as their papillary patterns may be impaired. It is very likely that fingerprint devices have not been designed to deal with damaged fingerprints, and therefore after scanning the fingerprint, they usually reject it.