Methods and Apparatuses are provided for a thin high contrast optical acquisition system for fingerprint recognition. In one embodiment, a method of capturing images of a fingerprint may include emitting light from a set of light sources to generate a scattered light from the fingerprint, determining a set of sensor arrays located between an inner boundary and an outer boundary from the set of light sources based on thickness and refractive index of one or more panels between the set of light sources and the fingerprint, activating the set of sensor arrays to capture the scattered light from the fingerprint, and processing the scattered light captured by the set of sensor arrays in parallel to generate a topography of the fingerprint.