A-iLearn: An adaptive incremental learning model for spoof fingerprint detection

Abstract

Incremental learning enables the learner to accommodate new knowledge without retraining the existing model. It is a challenging task that requires learning from new data and preserving the knowledge extracted from the previously accessed data. This challenge is known as the stability-plasticity dilemma. We propose A-iLearn, a generic model for incremental learning which overcomes the stability-plasticity dilemma by carefully integrating the ensemble of base classifiers trained on new data with the current ensemble without retraining the model from scratch using entire data. We demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed A-iLearn model on spoof fingerprint detection application. One of the significant challenges associated with spoof fingerprint detection is the performance drop on spoofs generated using new fabrication materials. A-iLearn is an adaptive incremental learning model that adapts to the features of the “live” and “spoof” fingerprint images and efficiently recognizes the new spoof fingerprints and the known spoof fingerprints when the new data is available. To the best of our knowledge, A-iLearn is the first attempt in incremental learning algorithms that adapts to the properties of data for generating a diverse ensemble of base classifiers. From the experiments conducted on standard high-dimensional datasets LivDet 2011, LivDet 2013 and LivDet 2015, we show that the performance gain on new fake materials is significantly high. On average, we achieve 49.57% improvement in accuracy between the consecutive learning phases.