Reliable Biometrics Data Quality Measure for Multi-modality Biometrics Fusion

This proposal is for a program that will develop a fully-functional multibiometric sensor based on multispectral imaging of the hand. Four distinct biometric signals will be collected for each hand insertion: fingerprints (4 + partial thumbprint), palmprints, skin textural characteristics, and hand shape. The multispectral aspect of the sensor provides a very robust and reliable means to collect each of the biometric sources of signal. Algorithms for biometric feature extraction and matching will be developed for each of the individual biometric sources. Score-level multibiometric fusion will be used to combine these four different biometric information sources to provide an overall matching score. One method of multibiometric fusion that will be tested is based on the quality of the individual biometric images. Therefore a component of this program will be focused on establishing suitable quality measures for each of the four biometrics contained in the whole-hand data. Based upon the excellent results generated by a proof-of-concept device generated in the first phase of this effort, it is anticipated that the multibiometric whole-hand sensor will achieve extremely high levels of biometric performance. A relatively large multi-person study will be conducted to estimate the performance characteristics of the full system.