1. A method for inpainting areas in a fingerprint image, the method comprising: dividing a fingerprint image into a plurality of image blocks; computing a plurality of block scores for said plurality of image blocks; generating a blur matrix for the fingerprint image based on said plurality of block scores; and deriving an inpaint region (IR) matrix for the fingerprint image based on a weighting function and said blur matrix, said IR matrix identifying a portion of said plurality of image blocks for inpainting.