1. A method for identifying a person using their finger-joint print including the outer skin around the proximal interphalangeal joint of a finger, the method comprising: capturing an image of the finger-joint print of the person; extracting a region of interest (ROI) image I ROI based on a local convexity property of the finger-joint print; extracting features representing the orientation of the lines in a finger-joint print image from the ROI image I ROI using an extended Gabor phase coding scheme and the extracted features are represented in competitive code maps; wherein angular distance between the competitive code maps is compared with a reference set in a database to identify the person.