Signal and Image Processing for Biometrics

Chapter 8Introduction to Hand Biometrics ¹

 

 

8.1. Introduction

In terms of characteristics, the hand contains huge amounts of information, allowing an efficient authentication or identification of individuals. Within this context and by considering the numerous available technical solutions, the fingerprint is certainly one of the most common biometric modalities, as it is time-invariant. In daily life, this modality is more and more integrated in numerous control systems by considering the fact that fingerprint sensors are getting more and more popular because of their low cost.

Except fingerprints, other hand features, which are more or less stable and more or less acceptable by the user, can be considered. For instance, we can consider the hand morphology, the finger veins, the palm print, the palm lines/veins, or even the forearm veins. Obviously, the use of a specific modality depends on the application itself. For instance, in some physical access control applications that require high acceptability, it may be convenient to use the hand morphology as a biometric modality. Technically speaking, the idea consists of simply measuring some distances or relative distances from the fingers and the palm. This will produce a feature vector that can be used to identify a user who has been previously enrolled (see Figure 8.1). In the illustration shown in Figure 8.1(b), the user puts his hand on a platform by taking into consideration some positioning constraints allowing an efficient ...