Multispectral Palmprint Encoding and Recognition

Palmprints are emerging as a new entity in multi-modal biometrics for human identification and verification. Multispectral palmprint images captured in the visible and infrared spectrum not only contain the wrinkles and ridge structure of a palm, but also the underlying pattern of veins; making them a highly discriminating biometric identifier. In this paper, we propose a feature encoding scheme for robust and highly accurate representation and matching of multispectral palmprints. To facilitate compact storage of the feature, we design a binary hash table structure that allows for efficient matching in large databases. Comprehensive experiments for both identification and verification scenarios are performed on two public datasets -- one captured with a contact-based sensor (PolyU dataset), and the other with a contact-free sensor (CASIA dataset). Recognition results in various experimental setups show that the proposed method consistently outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods. Error rates achieved by our method (0.003% on PolyU and 0.2% on CASIA) are the lowest reported in literature on both dataset and clearly indicate the viability of palmprint as a reliable and promising biometric. All source codes are publicly available.Comment: Preliminary version of this manuscript was published in ICCV 2011. Z. Khan A. Mian and Y. Hu, "Contour Code: Robust and Efficient Multispectral Palmprint Encoding for Human Recognition", International Conference on Computer Vision, 2011. MATLAB Code available: https://sites.google.com/site/zohaibnet/Home/code

Appearance-based localization for mobile robots using digital zoom and visual compass

This paper describes a localization system for mobile robots moving in dynamic indoor environments, which uses probabilistic integration of visual appearance and odometry information. The approach is based on a novel image matching algorithm for appearance-based place recognition that integrates digital zooming, to extend the area of application, and a visual compass. Ambiguous information used for recognizing places is resolved with multiple hypothesis tracking and a selection procedure inspired by Markov localization. This enables the system to deal with perceptual aliasing or absence of reliable sensor data. It has been implemented on a robot operating in an office scenario and the robustness of the approach demonstrated experimentally

Multi-modal palm-print and hand-vein biometric recognition at sensor level fusion

When it is important to authenticate a person based on his or her biometric qualities, most systems use a single modality (e.g. fingerprint or palm print) for further analysis at higher levels. Rather than using higher levels, this research recommends using two biometric features at the sensor level. The Log-Gabor filter is used to extract features and, as a result, recognize the pattern, because the data acquired from images is sampled at various spacing. Using the two fused modalities, the suggested system attained greater accuracy. Principal component analysis (PCA) was performed to reduce the dimensionality of the data. To get the optimum performance between the two classifiers, fusion was performed at the sensor level utilizing different classifiers, including K-nearest neighbors (K-NN) and support vector machines (SVMs). The technology collects palm prints and veins from sensors and combines them into consolidated images that take up less disk space. The amount of memory needed to store such photos has been lowered. The amount of memory is determined by the number of modalities fused

Design and development of Taeneb City Guide - from paper maps and guidebooks to electronic guides

This paper reports the design, development and feedback from the initial trial of the Taeneb City Guide project developing tourist information software on Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) handheld computers. Based on the users' requirements for electronic tourists guides already published in the literature, the paper focuses on the three main technology features of the systems, which would give the advantage over the existing paper publication: query-able dynamic map interface, dynamic information content and community review systems and users' forum. The paper also reports the results of an initial trial of a City Guide for Glasgow conducted as part of the EMAC 03 conference

The Ethical Implications of Personal Health Monitoring

Personal Health Monitoring (PHM) uses electronic devices which monitor and record health-related data outside a hospital, usually within the home. This paper examines the ethical issues raised by PHM. Eight themes describing the ethical implications of PHM are identified through a review of 68 academic articles concerning PHM. The identified themes include privacy, autonomy, obtrusiveness and visibility, stigma and identity, medicalisation, social isolation, delivery of care, and safety and technological need. The issues around each of these are discussed. The system / lifeworld perspective of Habermas is applied to develop an understanding of the role of PHMs as mediators of communication between the institutional and the domestic environment. Furthermore, links are established between the ethical issues to demonstrate that the ethics of PHM involves a complex network of ethical interactions. The paper extends the discussion of the critical effect PHMs have on the patient’s identity and concludes that a holistic understanding of the ethical issues surrounding PHMs will help both researchers and practitioners in developing effective PHM implementations

Performing the Union: the Prüm Decision and the European dream

In 2005, seven European countries signed the so-called Prüm Treaty to increase transnational collaboration in combating international crime, terrorism and illegal immigration. Three years later, the Treaty was adopted into EU law. EU member countries are obliged to have systems in place to allow authorities of other member states access to nationally held data on DNA, fingerprints, and vehicles by August 2011. In this paper, we discuss the conditions of possibility for the Prüm network to emerge, and argue that rather than a linear story of technological and political convergence and harmonisation, the (hi)story of Prüm is heterogeneous and patchy. This is reflected also in the early stages of implementing the Prüm Decision which proves to be more difficult than it was hoped by the drivers of the Prüm process. In this sense, the Prüm network sits uncomfortably with success stories of forensic science (many of which served the goal of justifying the expansion of technological and surveillance systems). Instead of telling a story of heroic science, the story of Prüm articulates the European dream: One in which goods, services, and people live and travel freely and securely

A New Hand Based Biometric Modality & An Automated Authentication System

With increased adoption of smartphones, security has become important like never before. Smartphones store confidential information and carry out sensitive financial transactions. Biometric sensors such as fingerprint scanners are built in to smartphones to cater to security concerns. However, due to limited size of smartphone, miniaturised sensors are used to capture the biometric data from the user. Other hand based biometric modalities like hand veins and finger veins need specialised thermal/IR sensors which add to the overall cost of the system. In this paper, we introduce a new hand based biometric modality called Fistprint.  Fistprints can be captured using digital camera available in any smartphone. In this work, our contributions are: i) we propose a new non-touch and non-invasive hand based biometric modality called fistprint. Fistprint contains many distinctive elements such as fist shape, fist size, fingers shape and size, knuckles, finger nails, palm crease/wrinkle lines etc. ii) Prepare fistprint DB for the first time. We collected fistprint information of twenty individuals - both males and females aged from 23 years to 45 years of age. Four images of each hand fist (total 160 images) were taken for this purpose. iii) Propose Fistprint Automatic Authentication SysTem (FAAST). iv) Implement FAAST system on Samsung Galaxy smartphone running Android and server side on a windows machine and validate the effectiveness of the proposed modality. The experimental results show the effectiveness of fistprint as a biometric with GAR of 97.5 % at 1.0% FAR