Three-dimensional ultrasound palmprint recognition using curvature methods

Abstract

Palmprint recognition systems that use three-dimensional (3-D) information of the palm surface are the most recently explored techniques to overcome some two-dimensional palmprint difficulties. These techniques are based on light structural imaging. In this work, a 3-D ultrasound palmprint recognition system is proposed and evaluated. Volumetric images of a region of the human hand are obtained by moving an ultrasound linear array along its elevation direction and one by one acquiring a number of B-mode images, which are then grouped in a 3-D matrix. The acquisition time was contained in about 5 s. Much information that can be exploited for 3-D palmprint recognition is extracted from the ultrasound volumetric images, including palm curvature and other under-skin information as the depth of the various traits. The recognition procedure developed in this work is based on the analysis of the principal curvatures of palm surface, i.e., mean curvature image, Gaussian curvature image, and surface type. The proposed method is evaluated by performing verification and identification experiments. Preliminary results have shown that the proposed system exhibits an acceptable recognition rate. Further possible improvements of the proposed technique are finally highlighted and discussed.