4 research outputs found
Robust multi-modal and multi-unit feature level fusion of face and iris biometrics
Multi-biometrics has recently emerged as a mean of more robust and effcient
personal verification and identification. Exploiting information from multiple
sources at various levels i.e., feature, score, rank or decision, the false acceptance
and rejection rates can be considerably reduced. Among all, feature level fusion
is relatively an understudied problem. This paper addresses the feature level
fusion for multi-modal and multi-unit sources of information. For multi-modal
fusion the face and iris biometric traits are considered, while the multi-unit fusion
is applied to merge the data from the left and right iris images. The proposed
approach computes the SIFT features from both biometric sources, either multi-
modal or multi-unit. For each source, the extracted SIFT features are selected via
spatial sampling. Then these selected features are finally concatenated together
into a single feature super-vector using serial fusion. This concatenated feature
vector is used to perform classification.
Experimental results from face and iris standard biometric databases are
presented. The reported results clearly show the performance improvements in
classification obtained by applying feature level fusion for both multi-modal and
multi-unit biometrics in comparison to uni-modal classification and score level
fusion
Human Verification using Multiple Fingerprint Texture Matchers
This paper presents a multimodal biometric verification system using multiple fingerprint matchers. Theproposed verification system is based on multiple fingerprint matchers using Spatial Grey LevelDependence Method and Filterbank-based technique. The method independently extract fingerprinttexture features to generate matching scores. These individual normalized scores are combined into afinal score by the sum rule and the final score is eventually used to effect verification of a person asgenuine or an imposter. The matching scores are used in two ways: in first case equal weights are assignedto each matching scores and in second case user specific weights are used. The proposed verificationsystem has been tested on fingerprint database of FVC2002. The experimental results demonstrate that theproposed fusion strategy improves the overall accuracy of the system by reducing the total error rate of thesystem.Keywords: - Multimodal biometric System, Fingerprint verification, SGLDM, Filterbank matching, Scorelevel fusion, Sum rule
Building a Strong Undergraduate Research Culture in African Universities
Africa had a late start in the race to setting up and obtaining universities with research quality fundamentals. According to Mamdani [5], the first colonial universities were few and far between: Makerere in East Africa, Ibadan and Legon in West Africa. This last place in the race, compared to other continents, has had tremendous implications in the development plans for the continent. For Africa, the race has been difficult from a late start to an insurmountable litany of problems that include difficulty in equipment acquisition, lack of capacity, limited research and development resources and lack of investments in local universities. In fact most of these universities are very recent with many less than 50 years in business except a few. To help reduce the labor costs incurred by the colonial masters of shipping Europeans to Africa to do mere clerical jobs, they started training âworkshopsâ calling them technical or business colleges. According to Mamdani, meeting colonial needs was to be achieved while avoiding the âIndian diseaseâ in Africa -- that is, the development of an educated middle class, a group most likely to carry the virus of nationalism. Upon independence, most of these âworkshopsâ were turned into national âuniversitiesâ, but with no clear role in national development. These national âuniversitiesâ were catering for children of the new African political elites. Through the seventies and eighties, most African universities were still without development agendas and were still doing business as usual. Meanwhile, governments strapped with lack of money saw no need of putting more scarce resources into big white elephants. By mid-eighties, even the UN and IMF were calling for a limit on funding African universities. In todayâs African university, the traditional curiosity driven research model has been replaced by a market-driven model dominated by a consultancy culture according to Mamdani (Mamdani, Mail and Guardian Online). The prevailing research culture as intellectual life in universities has been reduced to bare-bones classroom activity, seminars and workshops have migrated to hotels and workshop attendance going with transport allowances and per diems (Mamdani, Mail and Guardian Online). There is need to remedy this situation and that is the focus of this paper
Optimising multimodal fusion for biometric identification systems
Biometric systems are automatic means for imitating the human brainâs ability of identifying and verifying other humans by their behavioural and physiological characteristics. A system, which uses more than one biometric modality at the same time, is known as a multimodal system. Multimodal biometric systems consolidate the evidence presented by multiple biometric sources and typically provide better recognition performance compared to systems based on a single biometric modality. This thesis addresses some issues related to the implementation of multimodal biometric identity verification systems. The thesis assesses the feasibility of using commercial offthe-shelf products to construct deployable multimodal biometric system. It also identifies multimodal biometric fusion as a challenging optimisation problem when one considers the presence of several configurations and settings, in particular the verification thresholds adopted by each biometric device and the decision fusion algorithm implemented for a particular configuration. The thesis proposes a novel approach for the optimisation of multimodal biometric systems based on the use of genetic algorithms for solving some of the problems associated with the different settings. The proposed optimisation method also addresses some of the problems associated with score normalization. In addition, the thesis presents an analysis of the performance of different fusion rules when characterising the system users as sheep, goats, lambs and wolves. The results presented indicate that the proposed optimisation method can be used to solve the problems associated with threshold settings. This clearly demonstrates a valuable potential strategy that can be used to set a priori thresholds of the different biometric devices before using them. The proposed optimisation architecture addressed the problem of score normalisation, which makes it an effective âplug-and-playâ design philosophy to system implementation. The results also indicate that the optimisation approach can be used for effectively determining the weight settings, which is used in many applications for varying the relative importance of the different performance parameters