Transparent authentication: Utilising heart rate for user authentication

There has been exponential growth in the use of wearable technologies in the last decade with smart watches having a large share of the market. Smart watches were primarily used for health and fitness purposes but recent years have seen a rise in their deployment in other areas. Recent smart watches are fitted with sensors with enhanced functionality and capabilities. For example, some function as standalone device with the ability to create activity logs and transmit data to a secondary device. The capability has contributed to their increased usage in recent years with researchers focusing on their potential. This paper explores the ability to extract physiological data from smart watch technology to achieve user authentication. The approach is suitable not only because of the capacity for data capture but also easy connectivity with other devices - principally the Smartphone. For the purpose of this study, heart rate data is captured and extracted from 30 subjects continually over an hour. While security is the ultimate goal, usability should also be key consideration. Most bioelectrical signals like heart rate are non-stationary time-dependent signals therefore Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) is employed. DWT decomposes the bioelectrical signal into n level sub-bands of detail coefficients and approximation coefficients. Biorthogonal Wavelet (bior 4.4) is applied to extract features from the four levels of detail coefficents. Ten statistical features are extracted from each level of the coffecient sub-band. Classification of each sub-band levels are done using a Feedforward neural Network (FF-NN). The 1 st , 2 nd , 3 rd and 4 th levels had an Equal Error Rate (EER) of 17.20%, 18.17%, 20.93% and 21.83% respectively. To improve the EER, fusion of the four level sub-band is applied at the feature level. The proposed fusion showed an improved result over the initial result with an EER of 11.25% As a one-off authentication decision, an 11% EER is not ideal, its use on a continuous basis makes this more than feasible in practice

Personal identity verification based ECG biometric using non-fiducial features

Biometrics was used as an automated and fast acceptable technology for human identification and it may be behavioral or physiological traits. Any biometric system based on identification or verification modes for human identity. The electrocardiogram (ECG) is considered as one of the physiological biometrics which impossible to mimic or stole. ECG feature extraction methods were performed using fiducial or non-fiducial approaches. This research presents an authentication ECG biometric system using non-fiducial features obtained by Discrete Wavelet Decomposition and the Euclidean Distance technique was used to implement the identity verification. From the obtained results, the proposed system accuracy is 96.66% also, using the verification system is preferred for a large number of individuals as it takes less time to get the decision

Biometrics

Biometrics uses methods for unique recognition of humans based upon one or more intrinsic physical or behavioral traits. In computer science, particularly, biometrics is used as a form of identity access management and access control. It is also used to identify individuals in groups that are under surveillance. The book consists of 13 chapters, each focusing on a certain aspect of the problem. The book chapters are divided into three sections: physical biometrics, behavioral biometrics and medical biometrics. The key objective of the book is to provide comprehensive reference and text on human authentication and people identity verification from both physiological, behavioural and other points of view. It aims to publish new insights into current innovations in computer systems and technology for biometrics development and its applications. The book was reviewed by the editor Dr. Jucheng Yang, and many of the guest editors, such as Dr. Girija Chetty, Dr. Norman Poh, Dr. Loris Nanni, Dr. Jianjiang Feng, Dr. Dongsun Park, Dr. Sook Yoon and so on, who also made a significant contribution to the book

Individual identification via electrocardiogram analysis

Background: During last decade the use of ECG recordings in biometric recognition studies has increased. ECG characteristics made it suitable for subject identification: it is unique, present in all living individuals, and hard to forge. However, in spite of the great number of approaches found in literature, no agreement exists on the most appropriate methodology. This study aimed at providing a survey of the techniques used so far in ECG-based human identification. Specifically, a pattern recognition perspective is here proposed providing a unifying framework to appreciate previous studies and, hopefully, guide future research. Methods: We searched for papers on the subject from the earliest available date using relevant electronic databases (Medline, IEEEXplore, Scopus, and Web of Knowledge). The following terms were used in different combinations: electrocardiogram, ECG, human identification, biometric, authentication and individual variability. The electronic sources were last searched on 1st March 2015. In our selection we included published research on peer-reviewed journals, books chapters and conferences proceedings. The search was performed for English language documents. Results: 100 pertinent papers were found. Number of subjects involved in the journal studies ranges from 10 to 502, age from 16 to 86, male and female subjects are generally present. Number of analysed leads varies as well as the recording conditions. Identification performance differs widely as well as verification rate. Many studies refer to publicly available databases (Physionet ECG databases repository) while others rely on proprietary recordings making difficult them to compare. As a measure of overall accuracy we computed a weighted average of the identification rate and equal error rate in authentication scenarios. Identification rate resulted equal to 94.95 % while the equal error rate equal to 0.92 %. Conclusions: Biometric recognition is a mature field of research. Nevertheless, the use of physiological signals features, such as the ECG traits, needs further improvements. ECG features have the potential to be used in daily activities such as access control and patient handling as well as in wearable electronics applications. However, some barriers still limit its growth. Further analysis should be addressed on the use of single lead recordings and the study of features which are not dependent on the recording sites (e.g. fingers, hand palms). Moreover, it is expected that new techniques will be developed using fiducials and non-fiducial based features in order to catch the best of both approaches. ECG recognition in pathological subjects is also worth of additional investigations

Activity-Aware Electrocardiogram-based Passive Ongoing Biometric Verification

Identity fraud due to lost, stolen or shared information or tokens that represent an individual\u27s identity is becoming a growing security concern. Biometric recognition - the identification or verification of claimed identity, shows great potential in bridging some of the existing security gaps. It has been shown that the human Electrocardiogram (ECG) exhibits sufficiently unique patterns for use in biometric recognition. But it also exhibits significant variability due to stress or activity, and signal artifacts due to movement. In this thesis, we develop a novel activity-aware ECG-based biometric recognition scheme that can verify/identify under different activity conditions. From a pattern recognition standpoint, we develop algorithms for preprocessing, feature extraction and probabilistic classification. We pay particular attention to the applicability of the proposed scheme in ongoing biometric verification of claimed identity. Finally we propose a wearable prototype architecture of our scheme

Recent Application in Biometrics

In the recent years, a number of recognition and authentication systems based on biometric measurements have been proposed. Algorithms and sensors have been developed to acquire and process many different biometric traits. Moreover, the biometric technology is being used in novel ways, with potential commercial and practical implications to our daily activities. The key objective of the book is to provide a collection of comprehensive references on some recent theoretical development as well as novel applications in biometrics. The topics covered in this book reflect well both aspects of development. They include biometric sample quality, privacy preserving and cancellable biometrics, contactless biometrics, novel and unconventional biometrics, and the technical challenges in implementing the technology in portable devices. The book consists of 15 chapters. It is divided into four sections, namely, biometric applications on mobile platforms, cancelable biometrics, biometric encryption, and other applications. The book was reviewed by editors Dr. Jucheng Yang and Dr. Norman Poh. We deeply appreciate the efforts of our guest editors: Dr. Girija Chetty, Dr. Loris Nanni, Dr. Jianjiang Feng, Dr. Dongsun Park and Dr. Sook Yoon, as well as a number of anonymous reviewers

Wavelets in ECG Security Application

Wavelet packet transform has been used in many applications of biomedical signal processing, for example, feature extraction, noise reduction, data compression, electrocardiogram (ECG) anonymisation and QRS detection. The wavelet analysis methods, in these applications, represent the temporal characteristics of a biological signal by its spectral components in the frequency domain. Furthermore, it has been shown in many works that the ECG signal can be used as a biometric method for robust human identification and authentication. In this case, it is necessary to anonymise the ECG data during the distribution and storage of the signal in a public repository. A neglectful system leads to an eavesdropper recording the ECG data and uses it as recognition data to gain access via an ECG biometric system. This chapter discusses and reviews recent researches on ECG anonymisation wavelets-based techniques. These techniques use discrete wavelet transform and wavelet packet transform. A comparative study between the wavelets-based methods will be presented