Abstract: In one aspect, methods that use a novel representation, referred to as an octant feature vector (OFV), are used for matching distorted fingerprints. For instance, a feature-based matcher for distorted fingerprint matching may use a two-step local and global matching scheme to compare a set of feature vectors that are derived from minutiae of a reference fingerprint and a search fingerprint. The relative geometric relationships between the reference minutia and nearest minutiae may be derived and encoded into a feature vector based on orientation difference. The OFV is invariant to the rigid transformations and is insensitive to nonlinear distortions since the relative geometric relationships are independent from the rigid transformation.