We present a new approach for online handwritten signature classification and
verification based on descriptors stemming from Information Theory. The
proposal uses the Shannon Entropy, the Statistical Complexity, and the Fisher
Information evaluated over the Bandt and Pompe symbolization of the horizontal
and vertical coordinates of signatures. These six features are easy and fast to
compute, and they are the input to an One-Class Support Vector Machine
classifier. The results produced surpass state-of-the-art techniques that
employ higher-dimensional feature spaces which often require specialized
software and hardware. We assess the consistency of our proposal with respect
to the size of the training sample, and we also use it to classify the
signatures into meaningful groups.Comment: Submitted to PLOS On