Complete Region of Interest for Unconstrained Palmprint Recognition.

Unconstrained palmprint images have shown great potential for recognition applications due to their lower restrictions regarding hand poses and backgrounds during contactless image acquisition. However, they face two challenges: 1) unclear palm contours and finger-valley points of unconstrained palmprint images make it difficult to locate landmarks to crop the palmprint region of interest (ROI); and 2) large intra-class diversities of unconstrained palmprint images hinder the learning of intra-class-invariant palmprint features. In this paper, we propose to directly extract the complete palmprint region as the ROI (CROI) using the detection-style CenterNet without requiring the detection of any landmarks, and large intra-class diversities may occur. To address this, we further propose a palmprint feature alignment and learning hybrid network (PalmALNet) for unconstrained palmprint recognition. Specifically, we first exploit and align the multi-scale shallow representation of unconstrained palmprint images via deformable convolution and alignment-aware supervision, such that the pixel gaps of the intra-class palmprint CROIs can be minimized in shallow feature space. Then, we develop multiple triple-attention learning modules by integrating spatial, channel, and self-attention operations into convolution to adaptively learn and highlight the latent identity-invariant palmprint information, enhancing the overall discriminative power of the palmprint features. Extensive experimental results on four challenging palmprint databases demonstrate the promising effectiveness of both the proposed PalmALNet and CROI for unconstrained palmprint recognition.

Composición corporal, dermatoglifia y resistencia aeróbica en futbolistas bogotanos categoría sub 20 / Body Composition, Dermatoglyphics and Aerobic Resistance in Sub-20 Category Footballers from Bogota, Colombia

Resumen El fútbol como disciplina ha sido objeto de numerosas investigaciones que han permitido la potenciación de las cualidades de las personas deportistas para alcanzar el máximo rendimiento deportivo. El uso de nuevas herramientas ha permitido mejorar los procesos de selección de talentos y el desarrollo de las capacidades físicas, como es el caso de la dermatoglifia, que brinda información del genotipo de un individuo. El presente estudio pretende relacionar la composición corporal, la dermatoglifia y el consumo máximo de oxígeno en jugadores de fútbol categoría sub 20. La investigación fue cuantitativa, diseño no experimental, de tipo transversal. La muestra estuvo conformada por 22 futbolistas (edad 18 ± 1.1) de un club deportivo de Bogotá, a ellos se les realizó una valoración de composición corporal, se les calculó el somatotipo, se analizaron las huellas de las manos y se midió el consumo máximo de oxígeno con el Test Course Navette. Los resultados muestran predominio del somatotipo mesomorfo balanceado (53%), alta presencia de presillas "L" (66.36%), baja presencia de arcos "A" (1.82%) y un consumo máximo de oxígeno de 53.76 ± 3.73 ml/kg/min. Además, se encontraron relaciones significativas entre componentes dermatoglíficos D10-SCTL y el somatotipo endomorfo (p < 0.05), y entre el VO₂ máximo con somatotipo endomorfo y ectomorfo (p < 0.05). Se concluye que los futbolistas se caracterizan por tener una predisposición hacia la coordinación, la resistencia y la agilidad.

Abstract Soccer has generated endless research that has enhanced athlete's qualities to achieve maximum sports performance. According to the above, the use of new tools has been implemented to improve talent selection processes and develop physical abilities, as is the case with dermatoglyphics that provides information on an individual's genotype. The present study aims to relate body composition, dermatoglyphics, and maximum oxygen consumption in soccer players' category sub-20. The research had a quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional design. The sample comprised 22 players (age 18±1.1) from Bogota Sports Club, Colombia. They were assessed for body composition, the somatotype was calculated, handprints were analyzed, and the maximum oxygen consumption was measured with the Test Course Navette. The results show a predominance of balanced mesomorph somatotype (53%), high presence of "L" ridges (66.36 %), low presence of "A" arches (1.82%), and maximum oxygen consumption of 53.76±3.73 ml/kg/min. Furthermore, significant relationships were found between D10-SCTL dermatoglyphic components and the endomorph somatotype (p <0.05), and between the maximum VO₂ with endomorph and ectomorph somatotype (p <0.05). It is concluded that soccer players are characterized by having a predisposition towards coordination, resistance, and agility.

Resumo O futebol como disciplina tem sido objeto de inúmeras investigações que permitiram melhorar as qualidades dos desportistas para alcançar o máximo desempenho desportivo. A utilização de novas ferramentas tornou possível melhorar os processos de seleção de talentos e o desenvolvimento de capacidades físicas, como a dermatoglifia, que fornece informações sobre o genótipo de um indivíduo. O presente estudo visa relacionar a composição corporal, dermatoglifos e o consumo máximo de oxigênio nos jogadores de futebol sub-20. A pesquisa foi quantitativa, não-experimental e transversal. A amostra consistiu em 22 jogadores de futebol (18 ± 1,1 anos) de um clube desportivo de Bogotá, que foram submetidos a uma avaliação da composição corporal, foi calculado o somatotipo, foram analisadas as impressões digitais das mãos e foi medido o consumo máximo de oxigénio através do teste Course Navette. Os resultados mostram uma predominância do somatotipo mesomorfo balanceado (53%), presença elevada de presilha em "L" (66,36%), baixa presença de arcos em "A" (1,82%) e um consumo máximo de oxigênio de 53,76 ± 3,73 ml/kg/min. Além disso, foram encontradas relações significativas entre os componentes dermatoglíficos D10-SCTL e o somatotipo endomorfo (p < 0,05), e entre VO₂ máximo com somatotipo endomorfo e ectomorfo (p < 0,05). Conclui-se que os jogadores de futebol são caracterizados por uma predisposição para a coordenação, resistência e agilidade.

Photoacoustic tomography of fingerprint and underlying vasculature for improved biometric identification.

Capitalizing on the photoacoustic effect, we developed a new fingerprint sensing system that can reveal both fingerprints and underlying vascular structures at a high spatial resolution. Our system is built on a 15 MHz linear transducer array, a research ultrasound system, and a 532-nm pulsed laser. A 3D image was obtained by scanning the linear array over the fingertip. The acquired fingerprint images strongly agreed with the images acquired from ultrasound. Additional experiments were also conducted to investigate the effect of acoustic coupling. We discovered that high-quality fingerprint and vessel images can be acquired from both wet and dry fingers using our photoacoustic system. The reduced subdermal features in dry coupling can be enhanced through post-processing. Compared to existing fingerprint scanners, the photoacoustic approach provides a higher quality 3D image of the fingerprint, as well as unique subdermal vasculature structures, making the system almost impossible to counterfeit.

Visualization of Latent Fingermarks by Enhanced Chemiluminescence Immunoassay and Pattern Recognition.

Herein we report the combination of enzyme-linked immunoassay and pattern recognition analysis for extracting both chemical and spatial information from latent fingermarks (LFMs). The development approach basically involves two steps, namely, specific recognition of protein and polypeptide secretions present in the ridge residues of LFMs by horseradish peroxidase (HRP)-labeled antibodies and the HRP-catalyzed chemiluminescent (CL) reaction between luminol and H2O2. The emitted light can spatially resolve the ridges, generating a bright image against the dark object surface for visualization of an LFM. Meanwhile, thanks to the molecular specificity of the immunoassay step, the emission also provides us additional information on the existence of specific substances in LFMs. The developed LFMs are further processed by a set of digital image processing procedures. Quantitative analysis based on minutia features shows that even poorly developed fingermarks can be matched successfully. This work offers the promise of facilitating cross-disciplinary studies between data-processing approaches and fingermark development techniques, such as the extraction of more information from LFM evidence, as well as the establishment of evaluation criteria for an enhancement technique.

Emotion fingerprints or emotion populations? A meta-analytic investigation of autonomic features of emotion categories.

The classical view of emotion hypothesizes that certain emotion categories have a specific autonomic nervous system (ANS) "fingerprint" that is distinct from other categories. Substantial ANS variation within a category is presumed to be epiphenomenal. The theory of constructed emotion hypothesizes that an emotion category is a population of context-specific, highly variable instances that need not share an ANS fingerprint. Instead, ANS variation within a category is a meaningful part of the nature of emotion. We present a meta-analysis of 202 studies measuring ANS reactivity during lab-based inductions of emotion in nonclinical samples of adults, using a random effects, multilevel meta-analysis and multivariate pattern classification analysis to test our hypotheses. We found increases in mean effect size for 59.4% of ANS variables across emotion categories, but the pattern of effect sizes did not clearly distinguish 1 emotion category from another. We also observed significant variation within emotion categories; heterogeneity accounted for a moderate to substantial percentage (i.e., I2 ≥ 30%) of variability in 54% of these effect sizes. Experimental moderators epiphenomenal to emotion, such as induction type (e.g., films vs. imagery), did not explain a large portion of the variability. Correction for publication bias reduced estimated effect sizes even further, increasing heterogeneity of effect sizes for certain emotion categories. These findings, when considered in the broader empirical literature, are more consistent with population thinking and other principles from evolutionary biology found within the theory of constructed emotion, and offer insights for developing new hypotheses to understand the nature of emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record

Optical Methods in Fingerprint Imaging for Medical and Personality Applications.

Over the years, analysis and induction of personality traits has been a topic for individual subjective conjecture or speculation, rather than a focus of inductive scientific analysis. This study proposes a novel framework for analysis and induction of personality traits. First, 14 personality constructs based on the "Big Five" personality factors were developed. Next, a new fingerprint image algorithm was used for classification, and the fingerprints were classified into eight types. The relationship between personality traits and fingerprint type was derived from the results of the questionnaire survey. After comparison of pre-test and post-test results, this study determined the induction ability of personality traits from fingerprint type. Experimental results showed that the left/right thumbprint type of a majority of subjects was left loop/right loop and that the personalities of individuals with this fingerprint type were moderate with no significant differences in the 14 personality constructs.

Sexual dimorphism in dermatoglyphic traits and fluctuating asymmetry in Bulgarians from northeast Bulgaria.

In parallel with the development of dermatoglyphics as a method of identification, data have been accumulated on the characteristics of fingerprints related to sex and ethnic origin which make up the statistical basis of this study. The aims of the present study are to determine phenotype variations in the asymmetry of dermatoglyphics in both sexes within the scope of the entire hand skin ridge system; to investigate correlations between the phenotypes; and, to assess the fluctuating asymmetry among the Bulgarian population from the region of northwest Bulgaria. The sample consists of 894 unrelated, clinically healthy individuals (480 females and 414 males) aged 18-50 years, who live in towns and villages in the northwest provinces. Finger and palmar prints were collected using rolled print (inked) method. Twenty dermatoglyphics variables of fingers and hands, separately for right and left hands and jointly for both hands, were statistically assessed. The material was processed by SPSS 12 software. The results of the present study show distinctive sexual differences. Higher values in males are recorded in finger ridge counts, the Furuhata and Cummins indices, the palm ridge counts and the overall ridge counts in all interdigital areas. Males have higher frequency values in patterns Hy, Th/III and Th/IV.

Palmprint Recognition Based on Complete Direction Representation.

Direction information serves as one of the most important features for palmprint recognition. In the past decade, many effective direction representation (DR)-based methods have been proposed and achieved promising recognition performance. However, due to an incomplete understanding for DR, these methods only extract DR in one direction level and one scale. Hence, they did not fully utilize all potentials of DR. In addition, most researchers only focused on the DR extraction in spatial coding domain, and rarely considered the methods in frequency domain. In this paper, we propose a general framework for DR-based method named complete DR (CDR), which reveals DR by a comprehensive and complete way. Different from traditional methods, CDR emphasizes the use of direction information with strategies of multi-scale, multi-direction level, multi-region, as well as feature selection or learning. This way, CDR subsumes previous methods as special cases. Moreover, thanks to its new insight, CDR can guide the design of new DR-based methods toward better performance. Motived this way, we propose a novel palmprint recognition algorithm in frequency domain. First, we extract CDR using multi-scale modified finite radon transformation. Then, an effective correlation filter, namely, band-limited phase-only correlation, is explored for pattern matching. To remove feature redundancy, the sequential forward selection method is used to select a small number of CDR images. Finally, the matching scores obtained from different selected features are integrated using score-level-fusion. Experiments demonstrate that our method can achieve better recognition accuracy than the other state-of-the-art methods. More importantly, it has fast matching speed, making it quite suitable for the large-scale identification applications.

[The specific ethnic and territorial peculiarities of the papillary patterns on the fingers of the Russians, Kyrghyz and Uzbeks]. / Étnoterritorial'nye osobennosti papilliarnykh uzorov pal'tsev ruk russkikh, kirgizov i uzbekov.

The objective of the present study was to elucidate the specific ethnic and territorial peculiarities of the papillary patterns on the fingers of the Russians, Kyrghyz, and Uzbeks for the development of the criteria for the purpose of differential diagnostics. The materials for the analysis included the fingerprint cards obtained from 3570 Russians, 118 Kyrghyz, and 73 Uzbeks (men at the age from 14 to 25 years). We compared the data on the occurrence of different types of the papillary patterns. The significance of the differences was estimated with the use of the Student t-test. The comparative analysis of the papillary patterns showed that the Russians had the largest number of the arch patterns (8.2%) in their fingerprint cards whereas the Uzbeks had the lowest number (3.7%) of such patterns. The whorl patterns most frequently occurred in the fingerprint cards of the Kyrgyz (36.9%) whereas relatively few Russians exhibited this pattern (22.3%). Statistically significant differences were documented between the samples from the Russian and the Kyrgyz as well as from the Russians and the Uzbeks (p<0.01) whereas the difference between the Kyrgyz and the Uzbeks was insignificant (p>0.05). The list of 20 informative signs of the greatest diagnostic value is compiled taking into consideration the hand (right or left) and the sequential position of each finger. It is shown that the use of these signs makes it possible to distinguish between the «Russian¼ and «Kyrgyz¼ («Uzbek¼) papillary patterns on several fingers. Because the diagnostically significant combinations of the signs are known to occur but rarely, it is necessary to continue the search for the additional diagnostic traits in order to extend the sphere of practical applicability of the proposed method.

[The age-specific features of palm dermatoglyphics in the adults subjects].

This article was designed to consider the congenital age-specific features of palm dermatoglyphics in the adults subjects (including the type of the papillary patterns, axial tri-radii, the termini of palmar main lines, the rudiments of palmar lines, the dermatoglyphic ridge count between the stable anatomical structures). The objective of the study was to look for the new diagnostic markers of the biological age. It included the identification of the palm prints obtained from 180 Caucasoid men and 120 women at the age varying from 16 to 80 years. The results of the mathematical and statistical analysis provided the basis for drawing up the list of 18 attributes of palm dermatoglyphics significantly (p<0.05) differing in the frequency of occurrence between the representatives of individual age groups. The methods are proposed allowing to use these findings for the expert evaluation of the age of unknown subjects.

Sex determination from fingerprint ridge density and white line counts in Filipinos.

Fingerprints are distinct physical characteristics that remain unchanged throughout an individual's lifetime. This study derived Filipino-specific probability formulae from fingerprints to be used for sex discrimination in human identification cases. Ridge density from three different areas - distal radial area, distal ulnar area, and proximal area - as well as white line counts from fingerprints of 200 male and 200 female Filipinos were collected and analyzed statistically. Ridge densities of radial and ulnar areas emerged as displaying significant differences between the sexes, with 16ridges/25mm(2) or more in radial area and 15ridges/25mm(2) or more in ulnar area being more likely to be female, whereas 13ridges/25mm(2) or less in radial area and 12ridges/25mm(2) or less in ulnar area were more likely to be male. A white line count of 0 was more likely to be male while a white line count of 2 or more was more likely to be female. The results of this study show sex differences in Filipino fingerprints and support the observation of previous studies that females have finer ridges than males.

Efficient internal and surface fingerprint extraction and blending using optical coherence tomography.

Optical coherence tomography provides a 3D representation of fingertip skin where surface and internal fingerprints are found. These fingerprints are topographically identical. However, the surface skin is prone to damage, distortion, and spoofing; and the internal fingerprint is difficult to access and extract. This research presents a novel scaling-resolution approach to fingerprint zone detection and extraction. Furthermore, a local-quality-based blending procedure is also proposed. The accuracy of the zone-detection algorithm is comparable to an earlier work, yielding a mean-squared error of 25.9 and structural similarity of 95.8% (compared to a ground-truth estimate). Blending the surface and internal fingerprints improved the National Institute of Science and Technology's Fingerprint Image Quality scores and the average maximum match scores (when matched against conventional surface counterparts). The fingerprint blending procedure was able to combine high-quality regions from both fingerprints, thus mitigating surface wrinkles and anomalous poor-quality regions. Furthermore, spoof detection via a surface-to-internal fingerprint comparison was proposed and tested.

Detection and Rectification of Distorted Fingerprints.

Elastic distortion of fingerprints is one of the major causes for false non-match. While this problem affects all fingerprint recognition applications, it is especially dangerous in negative recognition applications, such as watchlist and deduplication applications. In such applications, malicious users may purposely distort their fingerprints to evade identification. In this paper, we proposed novel algorithms to detect and rectify skin distortion based on a single fingerprint image. Distortion detection is viewed as a two-class classification problem, for which the registered ridge orientation map and period map of a fingerprint are used as the feature vector and a SVM classifier is trained to perform the classification task. Distortion rectification (or equivalently distortion field estimation) is viewed as a regression problem, where the input is a distorted fingerprint and the output is the distortion field. To solve this problem, a database (called reference database) of various distorted reference fingerprints and corresponding distortion fields is built in the offline stage, and then in the online stage, the nearest neighbor of the input fingerprint is found in the reference database and the corresponding distortion field is used to transform the input fingerprint into a normal one. Promising results have been obtained on three databases containing many distorted fingerprints, namely FVC2004 DB1, Tsinghua Distorted Fingerprint database, and the NIST SD27 latent fingerprint database.

Towards Contactless, Low-Cost and Accurate 3D Fingerprint Identification.

Human identification using fingerprint impressions has been widely studied and employed for more than 2000 years. Despite new advancements in the 3D imaging technologies, widely accepted representation of 3D fingerprint features and matching methodology is yet to emerge. This paper investigates 3D representation of widely employed 2D minutiae features by recovering and incorporating (i) minutiae height z and (ii) its 3D orientation φ information and illustrates an effective matching strategy for matching popular minutiae features extended in 3D space. One of the obstacles of the emerging 3D fingerprint identification systems to replace the conventional 2D fingerprint system lies in their bulk and high cost, which is mainly contributed from the usage of structured lighting system or multiple cameras. This paper attempts to addresses such key limitations of the current 3D fingerprint technologies bydeveloping the single camera-based 3D fingerprint identification system. We develop a generalized 3D minutiae matching model and recover extended 3D fingerprint features from the reconstructed 3D fingerprints. 2D fingerprint images acquired for the 3D fingerprint reconstruction can themselves be employed for the performance improvement and have been illustrated in the work detailed in this paper. This paper also attempts to answer one of the most fundamental questions on the availability of inherent discriminable information from 3D fingerprints. The experimental results are presented on a database of 240 clients 3D fingerprints, which is made publicly available to further research efforts in this area, and illustrate the discriminant power of 3D minutiae representation and matching to achieve performance improvement.

Dermatoglyphic variation among the Limboo of Sikkim, India.

Variations in finger and palmar dermatoglyphic patterns are investigated among the Limboo (18-60 years, 150 males and 150 females), a little known population of Sikkim. The results for Limboo were compared with other North-East Indian populations. The most commonly occurring pattern was loop (males: 64.33%; females: 75.00%) followed by whorl (males: 31.00%; females: 21.33%) and finally arch (males: 4.67%; females: 3.66%). There were no significant differences between sexes in pattern types. The overall values of pattern intensity (P.I.I.), Dankmeijer's (D.I.) and Furuhata's (F.I.) indices were 14.08, 12.60 and 96.06 respectively. The P.I.I. was within the range for East Asian populations of North-East India. The D.I. was similar to those reported for Rajbanshi, Kalita, Rabha and Newar populations, while F.I. was higher than in other populations of Eastern Himalaya and North-East India. The most frequently occurring mainline formulae in all palm prints (left and right combined) were 7.5'.5.- followed by 9.7.5.- and finally 11.9.7.- (p>0.05) and these were similar to the reported values for other North-eastern populations of India. The mean values of total finger ridge count (TFRC) and absolute finger ridge count (AFRC) were greater among males (138.03; s=42.26 and 198.78; s=77.4) than females (137.91; s=44.15 and 194.47; s=86.71). The a-b ridge count was greater among females than males. Sex differences in AFRC and a-b ridge count were both statistically significant (p<0.05). The mean TFRC values were within ranges for populations of North-East India. Cluster analysis based on P.I.I., D.I. and F.I. shows affinity of the Limbo to some of the populations of Assam and North-East India.

Fingerprint Liveness Detection in the Presence of Capable Intruders.

Fingerprint liveness detection methods have been developed as an attempt to overcome the vulnerability of fingerprint biometric systems to spoofing attacks. Traditional approaches have been quite optimistic about the behavior of the intruder assuming the use of a previously known material. This assumption has led to the use of supervised techniques to estimate the performance of the methods, using both live and spoof samples to train the predictive models and evaluate each type of fake samples individually. Additionally, the background was often included in the sample representation, completely distorting the decision process. Therefore, we propose that an automatic segmentation step should be performed to isolate the fingerprint from the background and truly decide on the liveness of the fingerprint and not on the characteristics of the background. Also, we argue that one cannot aim to model the fake samples completely since the material used by the intruder is unknown beforehand. We approach the design by modeling the distribution of the live samples and predicting as fake the samples very unlikely according to that model. Our experiments compare the performance of the supervised approaches with the semi-supervised ones that rely solely on the live samples. The results obtained differ from the ones obtained by the more standard approaches which reinforces our conviction that the results in the literature are misleadingly estimating the true vulnerability of the biometric system.

The morphological diversity of dermatoglyphic patterns on fingers: a simple and objective method for measurement.

The paper contains a proposal for a simple way of measuring the morphological diversity of patterns on fingers. The mono/polymorphism index (Imp) is the sum of 45 mutual absolute differences between the numerical values of the patterns depending on their degree of morphological complexity. Wendt's 7-degree scale was used to quantify the patterns. The value Imp=0 denotes monomorphism, i.e., the presence of the same type of pattern on all the fingers of both hands, while high values denote a mosaic of patterns of diverse morphology (polymorphism). Elements of the individual values of the Imp index comprise mutual homolateral differences (10 differences for the fingers of the left hand and 10 differences for the right), on the basis of which an assessment was made between the sides of the body, and additionally 25 heterolateral differences. Generally, greater degree of morphological diversity in patterns is found in males, and on the fingers of the right hand in both sexes. The arithmetic mean of the Imp index differs significantly between males (55.17) and females (52.08). Its values are not directly related to the degree of morphological complexity of patterns included in the Wendt's index. There were found, however, intra-familial connections for this trait. In light of the values of the indices of correlation and association, it may be concluded that there are relatively weak but statistically significant parents-offspring relations, as well as between siblings. An objective way to determine the values of the Imp index would make it possible to use it both for the morphological characterization of dermatoglyphs in different populations and also in clinical, auxological and genetic research.

Palm-vein classification based on principal orientation features.

Personal recognition using palm-vein patterns has emerged as a promising alternative for human recognition because of its uniqueness, stability, live body identification, flexibility, and difficulty to cheat. With the expanding application of palm-vein pattern recognition, the corresponding growth of the database has resulted in a long response time. To shorten the response time of identification, this paper proposes a simple and useful classification for palm-vein identification based on principal direction features. In the registration process, the Gaussian-Radon transform is adopted to extract the orientation matrix and then compute the principal direction of a palm-vein image based on the orientation matrix. The database can be classified into six bins based on the value of the principal direction. In the identification process, the principal direction of the test sample is first extracted to ascertain the corresponding bin. One-by-one matching with the training samples is then performed in the bin. To improve recognition efficiency while maintaining better recognition accuracy, two neighborhood bins of the corresponding bin are continuously searched to identify the input palm-vein image. Evaluation experiments are conducted on three different databases, namely, PolyU, CASIA, and the database of this study. Experimental results show that the searching range of one test sample in PolyU, CASIA and our database by the proposed method for palm-vein identification can be reduced to 14.29%, 14.50%, and 14.28%, with retrieval accuracy of 96.67%, 96.00%, and 97.71%, respectively. With 10,000 training samples in the database, the execution time of the identification process by the traditional method is 18.56 s, while that by the proposed approach is 3.16 s. The experimental results confirm that the proposed approach is more efficient than the traditional method, especially for a large database.

Surnames, geographic altitude, and digital dermatoglyphics in a male population from the province of Jujuy (Argentina).

The possible association between finger dermatoglyphic patterns and altitude and surname distribution was analyzed in a sample of adult males from the province of Jujuy, Argentina. We also investigated the biological affinity of this population with other South American natives and admixed populations. Fingerprints were obtained from 996 healthy men, aged 18-20 years, from the highlands (HL: 2500m, Puna and Quebrada) and lowlands (LL: Valle and Selvas). Surnames were classified into native/autochthonous (A) or foreign (F), resulting in three surname classes: FF, when both paternal and maternal surnames were of foreign origin; FA, when one surname was foreign and the other was native; and AA, when both surnames were native. Frequencies of finger dermatoglyphic patterns - arches (A), radial loops (RL), ulnar loops (UL), and whorls (W) - were determined for each digit in relation to geographic location, altitude, and surname origin, resulting in the following categories: HL-FF, HL-FA, HL-AA, LL-FF, LL-FA, and LL-AA. The statistical analyses showed that UL and RL were more common in individuals of HL origin, whereas W and A were more frequent in the LL males (p<0.05). Significant associations were observed between finger dermatoglyphic patterns and surname origin when geographic altitude was considered. In the HL group, UL was associated with AA and FA; in the LL group, the presence of A was associated with FF and FA. The distribution of dermatoglyphic patterns shows that the population of Jujuy belongs to the Andean gene pool and that it has undergone differential levels of admixture related to altitude.