IMAGE PROCESSING IN BIOMETRIC AND RECOGNITION

M.INDUMATHI
Department of Computer Science,
Bangalore-560099
indumscmphil@gmail.com

Abstract: Biometrics is the science of establishing the identity of an individual based on physical,
chemical, or behavioral attributes of the person.The term "biometrics" is derived from the Greek words
bio (life) and metric (to measure). For our use, biometrics refers to technologies for measuring and
analyzing a person's physiological or behavioral characteristics.
Biometric-based identification and verification systems are poised to become a key technology,
with applications including controlling access to buildings and
Computers, reducing fraudulent transactions in electronic commerce, and discouraging illegal
immigration. In image-based biometrics, the biometric signature is acquired as an image and the image is
processed using techniques from computer vision, image understanding, and pattern recognition. We
consider two promising image-based bio-metrics, faces and fingerprints.

Keywords : Biometrics, identification, Multimodal biometrics, recognition and verification

Introduction
Biometrics is automated methods of recognizing a person based on a physiological or behavioral
characteristic. Among the features measured are; Face, Finger print, hand geometry, iris, retinal, signature
and voice. Biometric technologies are becoming the foundation of an extensive array of highly secure
identification and personal verification solutions. As the level of security breaches and transaction fraud
increases, the need for highly secure identification and personal verification technologies is becoming
apparent.
Biometric-based solutions are able to provide for confidential financial transactions and personal
data privacy. The need for biometrics can be found in federal, state and local governments, in the military,
and in commercial applications. Enterprise-wide network security infrastructures, government IDs, secure
electronic banking, investing and other financial transactions, retail sales, law enforcement, and health
and social services are already benefiting from these technologies.

Biometric-based authentication applications include workstation, network, and domain access,

single sign-on, application logon, data protection, remote access to resources, transaction security and
Web security.
Problem Description

In general, the terms recognition, identification, authentication and verification are often confused.
Recognition refers to the research field (Biometric person recognition) and is categorized in two modes:
authentication (also called verification) and identification.
An authentication (or verification) system involves confirming or denying the identity claimed by a
person (one-to-one matching). In contrast, an identification system attempts to establish the identity of a
given person out of a closed pool of N people (one-to-N matching). Authentication and identification
share the same preprocessing and feature extraction steps and a large part of the classifier design.
However, both modes target distinct applications. In authentication mode, people are supposed to
cooperate with the system (the claimant wants to be accepted).

Identification:
– Match a person’s biometrics against a database to figure out his identity by finding the closest match.
– Commonly referred to as 1: N matching
– ‘Criminal Watch-list’ application scenarios
Verification:
– The person claims to be ‘John’, system must match and compare his/hers biometrics with John’s stored
Biometrics.
– If they match, then user is ‘verified’ or authenticated that he is indeed ‘John’
– Access control application scenarios.
– Typically referred as 1:1 matching
Problems with current security systems
• Based on Passwords, or ID/Swipe cards
• Can be Lost.
• Can be forgotten.
• Worse! Can be stolen and used by a thief/intruder to access your data, bank accounts, car etc….
With increasing use of IT technology and need to protect data, we have multiple accounts/passwords.
• We can only remember so many passwords, so we end up using things we know to create them
(birthdays, wife/girlfriends name, dog, cat…)
• Its is easy to crack passwords, because most of our passwords are weak!
• If we create strong passwords (that should be meaningless to us) we will forget them! And there is no
way to remember multiple such passwords Good rules to follow when creating

Review of Literature

Definition: Biometrics is the science and technology of measuring and analyzing biological data. In
information technology, biometrics refers to technologies that measure and analyze human body
characteristics, such as DNA, fingerprints, eye retinas and irises, voice patterns, facial patterns and hand
measurements, for purposes.
Types of Biometric traits
1.Face

Face recognition analyzes facial characteristics. It requires a digital camera to develop a facial
image of the user for authentication. This technique has attracted considerable interest, although
many people don't completely understand its capabilities. Some vendors have made extravagant
claims — which are very difficult, if not impossible, to substantiate in practice — for facial
recognition devices. Because facial scanning needs an extra peripheral not customarily included
with basic PCs, it is more of a niche market for network authentication. However, the casino
industry has capitalized on this technology to create a facial database of scam artists for quick
detection by security personnel.

2.Fingerprint

It looks at the patterns found on a fingertip. There are a variety of approaches to fingerprint verification.
Some emulate the traditional police method of matching minutiae; others use straight pattern-matching
devices; and still others are a bit more unique, including things like moiréfringe patterns and ultrasonics.
Some verification approaches can detect when a live finger is presented; some cannot.

A greater variety of fingerprint devices is available than for any other biometric. As the prices of these
devices and processing costs fall, using fingerprints for user verification is gaining acceptance — despite
the common — criminal stigma.

Fingerprint verification may be a good choice for in-house systems, where you can give users adequate
explanation and training, and where the system operates in a controlled environment. It is not surprising
that the workstation access application area seems to be based almost exclusively on fingerprints, due to
the relatively low cost, small size, and ease of integration of fingerprint authentication devices.
3.Hand Geometry

It involves analyzing and measuring the shape of the hand. This biometric offers a good balance of
performance characteristics and is relatively easy to use. It might be suitable where there are more users
or where users access the system infrequently and are perhaps less disciplined in their approach to the
system.

Accuracy can be very high if desired and flexible performance tuning and configuration can
accommodate a wide range of applications. Organizations are using hand geometry readers in various
scenarios, including time and attendance recording, where they have proved extremely popular. Ease of
integration into other systems and processes, coupled with ease of use, makes hand geometry an obvious
first step for many biometric projects.

4.Iris

Iris based biometric, on the other hand, involves analyzing features found in the colored ring of tissue that
surrounds the pupil. Iris scanning, undoubtedly the less intrusive of the eye-related biometrics, uses a
fairly conventional camera element and requires no close contact between the user and the reader. In
addition, it has the potential for higher than average template-matching performance. Iris biometrics work
with glasses in place and is one of the few devices that can work well in identification mode. Ease of use
and system integration have not traditionally been strong points with iris scanning devices, but you can
expect improvements in these areas as new products emerge.
5.Signature

Signature verification analyzes the way a user signs her name. Signing features such as speed, velocity,
and pressure are as important as the finished signature's static shape. Signature verification enjoys a
synergy with existing processes that other biometrics do not. People are used to signatures as a means of
transaction-related identity verification, and most would see nothing unusual in extending this to
encompass biometrics. Signature verification devices are reasonably accurate in operation and obviously
lend themselves to applications where a signature is an accepted identifier. Surprisingly, relatively few
significant signature applications have emerged compared with other biometric methodologies. But if
your application fits, it is a technology worth considering.

6.Voice

Voice authentication is not based on voice recognition but on voice-to-print authentication, where
complex technology transforms voice into text. Voice biometrics has the most potential for growth,
because it requires no new hardware — most PCs already contain a microphone. However, poor quality
and ambient noise can affect verification. In addition, the enrollment procedure has often been more
complicated than with other biometrics, leading to the perception that voice verification is not user
friendly. Therefore, voice authentication software needs improvement. One day, voice may become an
additive technology to finger-scan technology. Because many people see finger scanning as a higher
authentication form, voice biometrics will most likely be relegated to replacing or enhancing PINs,
passwords, or account names

All biometric systems work in a similar fashion:

- The user submits a sample that is an identifiable, unprocessed image or recording of the physiological or
behavioral biometric via an acquisition device.
- This image and/or biometric is processed to extract information about distinctive features.
Biometric systems have four main components: sensor, feature extraction, biometric database, matching-
score and decision-making modules.
The processes of forensic computing can be divided into three main areas:
- Image Capture - The Imaging process is fundamental to any computer investigation.
- Image Processing - The processing software to extract features of the target image.

Face detection and recognition

Face processing (detection and recognition) is a challenging problem because faces highly vary in size,
shape, color, texture and location. Their overall appearance can also be influenced by lighting conditions,
facial expression, occlusion or facial features, such as beards, mustaches and glasses. Another challenging
problem comes from the orientation (upright, rotated) and the pose (frontal to profile) of the face.
The goal of face detection is to determine whether or not there are any faces in the image and, if present,
their location. It is the crucial first step of any application that involves face processing systems. Thus,
accurate and fast human face detection is the key to a successful operation.
Face recognition has been an active research area for more than 30 years and different systems are now
capable of correctly recognizing people's faces under specific environments (near frontal faces and
controlled imaging conditions). However, many applications need the ability to deal with faces of varying
head poses and adverse imaging conditions since most faces in the real world are not frontal and captured
in uncontrolled environments.

Multi-modal person recognition

In the past ten years, it has been shown that combining biometric systems achieves better performance
than techniques using only one biometric modality. This has been shown to be true using various fusion
algorithms. Fusion algorithms are methods whose goal is to merge the prediction of many algorithms
(multiple biometric modules) in the hope of a better average performance than any of the individual
methods. This fusion can be simple (maximum score, product or sum rules), but it is often better to train a
fusion system using Machine Learning algorithms. Most of the proposed fusion techniques, often called
late integration techniques, operate at the score or decision levels. Other techniques, called early
integration techniques, aim to exploit the correlation between biometric modalities if any. This is the case
for instance between the video and audio streams of a talking face while the person pronounce a sentence.

Biometric Characteristics
 Universality – everyone should have it
 Uniqueness – small probability that two persons are the same with this characteristic
 Permanence – invariance with
 Collectability – can be measured quantitatively
 Performance – high identification accuracy
 Acceptability – acceptance by people
 Circumvention – how easy to fool the system by fraudulent techniques
Examples of Biometrics traits
Applications of Biometric

The main applications are access control systems (airport checking, monitoring, computer or mobile devices
log-in), building gate control, digital multimedia access, transaction authentication (in telephone banking or
remote credit card purchases for instance), voice mail, or secure teleworking. On the other hand, in
identification mode, people are generally not concerned by the system and often even do not want to be
identified. Potential applications includes video surveillance (public places, restricted areas), forensic (police
databases) and information retrieval (video or photo album annotation/identification).

Conclusion

Biometrics Implementation should be the result of cost/benefit analysis stemming from a risk assessment.
However, regulatory constraints sometimes make our decision easy. The only thing possible at that point
is to select the solution that makes sense.

Making sense, or the reasonable and appropriate implementation of biometrics, includes consideration of
several factors.

 Understand the limitations of the target operating environments

 Ensure the overall security context supports reference template safety
 Understand the probability of forgery and match it to the importance of that which you are trying
to protect
 Do not implement a biometrics solution that exposes business processes to a potential business
continuity event in the form of sensor or backend authentication server loss
 Ask each vendor to provide reasonable proof of error rates for the products proposed
 Always consider how users might receive the new systems
Although not covered in the chapter, I want to close with a very strong recommendation to pilot any
biometrics solution before signing a final vendor agreement. This is the best way to ensure management
and user acceptance, operational suitability, and the impact of environmental conditions.
References

 Jain, Anil K.; Flynn, Patrick; Ross, Arun A. (Eds.), “Handbook of Biometrics,” Springer, 1 ed.
(August 31, 2007)

 A.K. Jain, R. Bolle, and S. Pankanti, editors. Biometrics: Personal Identification in Networked
Society. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999.

 Natalia A. Schmid, BIOM 426 (Introduction to Biometrics Systems) Course Website,

http://www.csee.wvu.edu/~natalias/biom426/biom426_fall05.html

 www.cylab.cmu.edu