Fingerprint verification by fusion of optical and capacitive sensors

A few works have been presented so far on information fusion for fingerprint verification. None, however, have explicitly investigated the use of multi-sensor fusion, in other words, the integration of the information provided by multiple devices to capture fingerprint images. In this paper, a multi-sensor fingerprint verification system based on the fusion of optical and capacitive sensors is presented. Reported results show that such a multi-sensor system can perform better than traditional fingerprint matchers based on a single sensor. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Balancing Accuracy and Error Rates in Fingerprint Verification Systems Under Presentation Attacks With Sequential Fusion

The assessment of the fingerprint PADs embedded into a comparison system represents an emerging topic in biometric recognition. Providing models and methods for this aim helps scientists, technologists, and companies to simulate multiple scenarios and have a realistic view of the process’s consequences on the recognition system. The most recent models aimed at deriving the overall system performance, especially in the sequential assessment of the fingerprint liveness and comparison pointed out a significant decrease in Genuine Acceptance Rate (GAR). In particular, our previous studies showed that PAD contributes predominantly to this drop, regardless of the comparison system used. This paper’s goal is to establish a systematic approach for the “trade-off” computation between the gain in Impostor Attack Presentation Accept Rate (IAPAR) and the loss in GAR mentioned above. We propose a formal “trade-off” definition to measure the balance between tackling presentation attacks and the performance drop on genuine users. Experimental simulations and theoretical expectations confirm that an appropriate “trade-off” definition allows a complete view of the sequential embedding potentials

Serial fusion of multi-modal biometric systems

Serial, or sequential, fusion of multiple biometric matchers has been not thoroughly investigated so far. However, this approach exhibits some advantages with respect to the widely adopted parallel approaches. In this paper, we propose a novel theoretical framework for the assessment of performance of such systems, based on a previous work of the authors. Benefits in terms of performance are theoretically evaluated, as well as estimation errors in the model parameters computation. Model is analyzed from the viewpoint of its pros and cons, by mean of preliminary experiments performed on NIST Biometric Score Set 1

Statistical meta-analysis of presentation attacks for secure multibiometric systems

Prior work has shown that multibiometric systems are vulnerable to presentation attacks, assuming that their matching score distribution is identical to that of genuine users, without fabricating any fake trait. We have recently shown that this assumption is not representative of current fingerprint and face presentation attacks, leading one to overestimate the vulnerability of multibiometric systems, and to design less effective fusion rules. In this paper, we overcome these limitations by proposing a statistical meta-model of face and fingerprint presentation attacks that characterizes a wider family of fake score distributions, including distributions of known and, potentially, unknown attacks. This allows us to perform a thorough security evaluation of multibiometric systems against presentation attacks, quantifying how their vulnerability may vary also under attacks that are different from those considered during design, through an uncertainty analysis. We empirically show that our approach can reliably predict the performance of multibiometric systems even under never-before-seen face and fingerprint presentation attacks, and that the secure fusion rules designed using our approach can exhibit an improved trade-off between the performance in the absence and in the presence of attack. We finally argue that our method can be extended to other biometrics besides faces and fingerprints

LivDet 2017 Fingerprint Liveness Detection Competition 2017

Fingerprint Presentation Attack Detection (FPAD) deals with distinguishing images coming from artificial replicas of the fingerprint characteristic, made up of materials like silicone, gelatine or latex, and images coming from alive fingerprints. Images are captured by modern scanners, typically relying on solid-state or optical technologies. Since from 2009, the Fingerprint Liveness Detection Competition (LivDet) aims to assess the performance of the state-of-the-art algorithms according to a rigorous experimental protocol and, at the same time, a simple overview of the basic achievements. The competition is open to all academics research centers and all companies that work in this field. The positive, increasing trend of the participants number, which supports the success of this initiative, is confirmed even this year: 17 algorithms were submitted to the competition, with a larger involvement of companies and academies. This means that the topic is relevant for both sides, and points out that a lot of work must be done in terms of fundamental and applied research.Comment: presented at ICB 201

LivDet in Action - Fingerprint Liveness Detection Competition 2019

The International Fingerprint liveness Detection Competition (LivDet) is an open and well-acknowledged meeting point of academies and private companies that deal with the problem of distinguishing images coming from reproductions of fingerprints made of artificial materials and images relative to real fingerprints. In this edition of LivDet we invited the competitors to propose integrated algorithms with matching systems. The goal was to investigate at which extent this integration impact on the whole performance. Twelve algorithms were submitted to the competition, eight of which worked on integrated systems.Comment: Preprint version of a paper accepted at ICB 201

Preliminary Results on a "Real" Iris Recognition System under Challenging Operational Conditions

Iris recognition algorithms have recently demonstrated excellent performance in the authentication task. In this paper, we present a technology transfer project for the development and testing of a biometric recognition system under challenging operational conditions. Due to the stringent operational requirements, the design and implementation of the system included a phase of selecting technologically advanced hardware. The lack of corresponding data sets implied a novel acquisition step. The evaluation phase is preliminary as the data set is being expanded for the acquisition of new samples capable of highlighting the system’s critical issues. Current samples were acquired in very different lighting conditions and in the presence of glasses, which was not yet done in the literature. In addition to the selected hardware, such data allowed us to simulate a realistic environmental context for the project’s final prototype

On the interoperability of capture devices in fingerprint presentation attacks detection

Abstract A presentation attack consists in submitting to the fingerprint capture device an artificial replica of the finger of the targeted client. If the sensor is not equipped with an appropriate algorithm aimed to detect the fingerprint spoof, the system processes the obtained image as a one belonging to a real fingerprint. In order to face this problem, several presentation attacks detection (PAD) algorithms have been proposed so far. Current methods heavily rely on features extracted from a large data set of fake and real fingerprint images, and an appropriate classifier trained with such data to distinguish between live (real) and fake (spoof) fingerprint images. Building such data set requires a significant effort for fabricating samples of fake fingerprints, with the most effective materials used to circumvent the sensor. Interesting and promising results have been obtained, but they also suggest that the PAD is tailored on the particular sensor. Small and significant differences also occur when a novel version of the same sensor is released, and this may affect the PAD. Therefore, making a PAD interoperable is among the main current issues when considering fingerprints as the first level of protection and security of logical or physical resources. This paper is a first attempt to assess at which extent the sensor interoperability can be an issue for fingerprint PADs and to eventually propose a solution to this limitation. In particular, textural features will be under focus and a feature space transformation method based on the least square is proposed