a finger being presented and scanned by the fingerprint scanner is a live finger and not a prosthetic or severed finger having a false fingerprint fig1 depicts a flow chart for a live finger detection method that may be used in conjunction with the identification and verification methods described herein the binary fingerprint image of step 214 in fig2 is further analyzed to detect the presence and size of sweat pores contained within the fingerprint image the binary image is provided as depicted in step 1002 the boundaries of the binary image are traced and chain coded as depicted in step 1004 all clockwise closed chains are detected as depicted in step 1006 and the area and arc length of the detected closed chains are measured as depicted in step 1008 although clockwise closed chains are used to identify sweat pores counter clockwise closed chains can also be used the measured area is compared to a sweat pore threshold and if greater than the sweat pore threshold the closed chain is a detected sweat pore if the sweat pore exceeds a certain live finger sweat pore threshold the finger is flagged as live as depicted in step 1010 in the illustrated embodiment in which the fingerprint sensor scanner has a 500.