Hand vein biometry based on geometry and appearance methods

Many biometric systems, such as face, fingerprint and iris have been studied extensively for personal verification and identification purposes. Biometric identification with vein patterns is a more recent approach that uses the vast network of blood vessels underneath a person´s skin. These patterns in the hands are assumed to be unique to each individual and they do not change over time except in size. As veins are under the skin and have a wealth of differentiating features, an attempt to copy an identity is extremely difficult. These properties of uniqueness, stability and strong immunity to forgery of the vein patterns make it a potentially good biometric trait which offers greater security and reliable features for personal identification. In this study, the authors present a novel hand vein database and a biometric technique based on the statistical processing of the hand vein patterns. The BOSPHORUS hand vein database has been collected under realistic conditions in that subjects had to undergo the procedures of holding a bag, pressing an elastic ball and cooling with ice, all exercises that force changes in the vein patterns. The applied recognition techniques are a combination of geometric and appearance-based techniques and good identification performances have been obtained on the database.