Vertical Off-line Signature Feature Block for Verification

Handwritten signature image is normally used as a mark of endorsement of written document. Signatures of the same person vary and they can be forged by imposters. Effective feature extraction algorithm is needed in off-line signature verification. Robust features capable of increases interpersonal variation and decreases intra personal variation are required. This work presents robust signature feature that can be used to build effective off-line signature verification system. Signature processing is performed and the preprocessed signature image is vertically divided into sixteen smaller image blocks through the center of gravity. Three features are extracted from these smaller image blocks. Feature vector is formed and are passed to Support Vector Machine (SVM) for training and classification. The proposed signature feature vector increases the accuracy of tested off-line signature verification syste

OSPCV: Off-line Signature Verification using Principal Component Variances

Signature verification system is always the most sought after biometric verification system. Being a behavioral biometric feature which can always be imitated, the researcher faces a challenge in designing such a system, which has to counter intrapersonal and interpersonal variations. The paper presents a comprehensive way of off-line signature verification based on two features namely, the pixel density and the centre of gravity distance. The data processing consists of two parallel processes namely Signature training and Test signature analysis. Signature training involves extraction of features from the samples of database and Test signature analysis involves extraction of features from test signature and it’s comparison with those of trained values from database. The features are analyzed using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The proposed work provides a feasible result and a notable improvement over the existing systems

Neural Network Based Approach For Signature Verification And Recognition

Signature can be seen as an individual characteristic of a person which can be used for his/her validation. An automated signature verification and recognition technique saves valuable time and money. Neural network based approach for signature verification and recognition discussed in this paper which enables the user to recognize whether a signature is original or a fraud. The user introduces into the computer the scanned images, modifies their quality by image enhancement and noise reduction techniques, to be followed by feature extraction and neural network training, and finally verifies the authenticity of the signature. The paper is primarily focused on five features of extraction like eccentricity, kurtosis, skewness, orientation and centroid. The extracted features of investigation signature are compared with the previously trained features of the reference signature. This technique is suitable for various applications such as bank transactions, passports with good authentication results et

Student Authentication for Oral Assessment in Distance Learning Programs

The past decade has seen the proliferation of e-learning and distance learning programs across a wealth of discipline areas. In order to preserve maximum flexibility in outreach, student assessment based exclusively on remotely submitted work has become commonplace. However, there is also growing evidence that e-learning also provides increased opportunity for plagiarism with obvious consequences for learning effectiveness. This paper reports on the development of a prototype student authentication system designed for use with a graduate e-learning program. The proposed system can be used to authenticate a telephone-based oral examination which can, in turn, be used to confirm a student’s ability in relation to submitted assignments and online test results. The prototype low-cost system is shown to be sufficiently accurate to act as an effective deterrent against plagiarism

A Nonlinear Mixture Autoregressive Model For Speaker Verification

In this work, we apply a nonlinear mixture autoregressive (MixAR) model to supplant the Gaussian mixture model for speaker verification. MixAR is a statistical model that is a probabilistically weighted combination of components, each of which is an autoregressive filter in addition to a mean. The probabilistic mixing and the datadependent weights are responsible for the nonlinear nature of the model. Our experiments with synthetic as well as real speech data from standard speech corpora show that MixAR model outperforms GMM, especially under unseen noisy conditions. Moreover, MixAR did not require delta features and used 2.5x fewer parameters to achieve comparable or better performance as that of GMM using static as well as delta features. Also, MixAR suffered less from overitting issues than GMM when training data was sparse. However, MixAR performance deteriorated more quickly than that of GMM when evaluation data duration was reduced. This could pose limitations on the required minimum amount of evaluation data when using MixAR model for speaker verification

Multibiometric security in wireless communication systems

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University, 05/08/2010.This thesis has aimed to explore an application of Multibiometrics to secured wireless communications. The medium of study for this purpose included Wi-Fi, 3G, and WiMAX, over which simulations and experimental studies were carried out to assess the performance. In specific, restriction of access to authorized users only is provided by a technique referred to hereafter as multibiometric cryptosystem. In brief, the system is built upon a complete challenge/response methodology in order to obtain a high level of security on the basis of user identification by fingerprint and further confirmation by verification of the user through text-dependent speaker recognition. First is the enrolment phase by which the database of watermarked fingerprints with memorable texts along with the voice features, based on the same texts, is created by sending them to the server through wireless channel. Later is the verification stage at which claimed users, ones who claim are genuine, are verified against the database, and it consists of five steps. Initially faced by the identification level, one is asked to first present one’s fingerprint and a memorable word, former is watermarked into latter, in order for system to authenticate the fingerprint and verify the validity of it by retrieving the challenge for accepted user. The following three steps then involve speaker recognition including the user responding to the challenge by text-dependent voice, server authenticating the response, and finally server accepting/rejecting the user. In order to implement fingerprint watermarking, i.e. incorporating the memorable word as a watermark message into the fingerprint image, an algorithm of five steps has been developed. The first three novel steps having to do with the fingerprint image enhancement (CLAHE with 'Clip Limit', standard deviation analysis and sliding neighborhood) have been followed with further two steps for embedding, and extracting the watermark into the enhanced fingerprint image utilising Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). In the speaker recognition stage, the limitations of this technique in wireless communication have been addressed by sending voice feature (cepstral coefficients) instead of raw sample. This scheme is to reap the advantages of reducing the transmission time and dependency of the data on communication channel, together with no loss of packet. Finally, the obtained results have verified the claims

Unimodal and multimodal biometric sensing systems : a review

Biometric systems are used for the verification and identification of individuals using their physiological or behavioral features. These features can be categorized into unimodal and multimodal systems, in which the former have several deficiencies that reduce the accuracy of the system, such as noisy data, inter-class similarity, intra-class variation, spoofing, and non-universality. However, multimodal biometric sensing and processing systems, which make use of the detection and processing of two or more behavioral or physiological traits, have proved to improve the success rate of identification and verification significantly. This paper provides a detailed survey of the various unimodal and multimodal biometric sensing types providing their strengths and weaknesses. It discusses the stages involved in the biometric system recognition process and further discusses multimodal systems in terms of their architecture, mode of operation, and algorithms used to develop the systems. It also touches on levels and methods of fusion involved in biometric systems and gives researchers in this area a better understanding of multimodal biometric sensing and processing systems and research trends in this area. It furthermore gives room for research on how to find solutions to issues on various unimodal biometric systems.http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=6287639am2017Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineerin

CONDITION MONITORING BASED ON A WIRELESS, DISTRIBUTED AND SCALABLE PLATFORM

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Multi-modal association learning using spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP)

We propose an associative learning model that can integrate facial images with speech signals to target a subject in a reinforcement learning (RL) paradigm. Through this approach, the rules of learning will involve associating paired stimuli (stimulus–stimulus, i.e., face–speech), which is also known as predictor-choice pairs. Prior to a learning simulation, we extract the features of the biometrics used in the study. For facial features, we experiment by using two approaches: principal component analysis (PCA)-based Eigenfaces and singular value decomposition (SVD). For speech features, we use wavelet packet decomposition (WPD). The experiments show that the PCA-based Eigenfaces feature extraction approach produces better results than SVD. We implement the proposed learning model by using the Spike- Timing-Dependent Plasticity (STDP) algorithm, which depends on the time and rate of pre-post synaptic spikes. The key contribution of our study is the implementation of learning rules via STDP and firing rate in spatiotemporal neural networks based on the Izhikevich spiking model. In our learning, we implement learning for response group association by following the reward-modulated STDP in terms of RL, wherein the firing rate of the response groups determines the reward that will be given. We perform a number of experiments that use existing face samples from the Olivetti Research Laboratory (ORL) dataset, and speech samples from TIDigits. After several experiments and simulations are performed to recognize a subject, the results show that the proposed learning model can associate the predictor (face) with the choice (speech) at optimum performance rates of 77.26% and 82.66% for training and testing, respectively. We also perform learning by using real data, that is, an experiment is conducted on a sample of face–speech data, which have been collected in a manner similar to that of the initial data. The performance results are 79.11% and 77.33% for training and testing, respectively. Based on these results, the proposed learning model can produce high learning performance in terms of combining heterogeneous data (face–speech). This finding opens possibilities to expand RL in the field of biometric authenticatio