A system and method for inpainting areas in a fingerprint image is provided. The method includes the steps of dividing a fingerprint image into a plurality of image blocks (506) and computing a plurality of block scores for the plurality of image blocks (508). The method also includes generating a blur matrix for the fingerprint image based on the plurality of block scores (510). The method further includes deriving an inpaint region (IR) matrix for the fingerprint image based on a weighting function and the blur matrix, the IR matrix identifying a portion of the plurality of image blocks for inpainting (512, 514).