Fingerprint matching is a crucial step in fingerprint identification.Recently,a variety of algorithms for this issue have been developed.Each of them is application situation specific and has its advantages and disadvantages.It is highly desired to develop an efficient fingerprint verification technology for Integrated Circuit(IC)Cards or chips.IC cards have some special characteristics,such as very small storage space and slow processing speed,which hinder the use of most fingerprint matching algorithms in such situations.In order to solve this problem,the paper presents an improved minutia-pattern(minutiae-based)matching algorithm by employing the orientation field of the fingerprint as a new feature.Our algorithm not only inherits the advantages of the general minutia-pattern matching algorithms,but also overcomes their disadvantages.Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can greatly improve the performance of fingerprint matching in both accuracy and efficiency,and it is very suitable for applications in IC cards.