Biometric Systems and Their Applications

Visual Impairment and Blindness - What We Know and What We Have to Know

Edited by Giuseppe Lo Giudice and Angel Catalá

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Abstract

Nowadays, we are talking more and more about insecurity in various sectors as well as the computer techniques to be implemented to counter this trend: access control to computers, e-commerce, banking, etc. There are two traditional ways of identifying an individual. The first method is a knowledge-based method. It is based on the knowledge of an individual’s information such as the PIN code to allow him/her to activate a mobile phone. The second method is based on the possession of token. It can be a piece of identification, a key, a badge, etc. These two methods of identification can be used in a complementary way to obtain increased security like in bank cards. However, they each have their weaknesses. In the first case, the password can be forgotten or guessed by a third party. In the second case, the badge (or ID or key) may be lost or stolen. Biometric features are an alternative solution to the two previous identification modes. The advantage of using the biometric features is that they are all universal, measurable, unique, and permanent. The interest of applications using biometrics can be summed up in two classes: to facilitate the way of life and to avoid fraud.

Keywords

Author Information

Souhail Guennouni *

Anass Mansouri

Ali Ahaitouf

*Address all correspondence to: mrsouhail@gmail.com

1. Introduction

The increasing performance of computers over the last decade has stimulated the development of general-purpose computer vision algorithms. One of the major problems of computer vision is object recognition tasks, to which special attention is paid. This is due to the desire to create artificial intelligent systems. The first step toward any kind of intelligence is perception, followed by reasoning and action.

Human perception is based on visual perception. Since intelligent artificial systems are primarily inspired by human perception and reasoning, we can conclude that visual perception is an important source of information for many potential systems.

Recently, there was a raising interest on eye tracking technology. This is mainly due to the industrial growth of many domains such as augmented reality, smart cars, and web applications’ testing for which a solid eye tracking technology is essential. Eye movement recognition, combined with other biometrics such as sound recognition, can enable a smooth interaction with virtual environments.

A good example of a smart system is the autonomous car. It perceives the surrounding world and the signs while adapting her behavior to changing situations. Such a car contains a lot of different sensors, which help to perceive the necessary information. The visual perception of the surrounding world is among the most important. It could be used to recognize pedestrians on the street, cars, animals, or even unspecified objects on the road, which could pose a potential threat to human life.

Improving and developing object recognition algorithms will help improve not only artificial intelligent systems but many other useful applications in today’s world. Other examples of application of this system can be extended to the tourist industry where applications of augmented reality (Figure 1) are becoming more and more popular especially after the widespread use of smartphones. In addition, the field of video surveillance is also a possible extension of object detection algorithms because of the need for quick and timely detection of different video scenes captured by cameras.

2. Issues and challenges

After analyzing the potential problems associated with recognition tasks, we believe that the direction to follow in imitating the human visual perception system is natural. The first moment of human comprehension of the image is a very general activity that analyzes the basic categories (buildings, men, cars, etc.). After getting the big picture, his attention focuses on the things that interest him. While focusing, humans observe objects of interest to enrich more details and see and recognize more features. A feature is a general term for describing a particular part of the object in order to enrich its appearance. A human has special predispositions on several objects (e.g., faces) and on situations (mainly of the danger and movement type) on which he is more sensitive to recognize. The typical situation is when you see someone away from you and you can recognize that it is a person. As you get closer, by focusing on this person, you are enriching and recognizing more and more elements that make it possible to distinguish whether he is a known person and to detect his name. Humans can do instance-level recognition as in the case presented, but they must first distinguish the object category to optimize the subsequent search.

3. Biometric systems overview

3.1 History of biometrics

Biometrics has been a concern for centuries. Proving one’s identity reliably was done using several techniques. From prehistory man knew the uniqueness of fingerprints, which meant that signatures by fingerprints were sufficient to prove the identity of an individual. Indeed, two centuries before Christ, the Emperor Ts-In-She authenticated certain sealed with the fingerprint.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, in France, Alphonse Bertillon launched the first steps of the scientific police. He proposed the first method of biometrics that can be described as a scientific approach: bertillonage allowed the identification of criminals through several physiological measures.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, biometry was rediscovered by William James Herschel, an English officer who had the idea of having his subcontractors sign their fingerprints to find them easily in case of unhonored contracts. As a result, police departments have begun using fingerprints as a unique and reliable feature to identify an individual.

Biometrics is constantly growing especially in the field of secure identity documents such as the national identity card, passport, or driving license. This technology is running on new platforms, including chip cards based on the microprocessor.

3.2 Biometric market development

The biometric market has undergone a great development thanks to the great number of advancement and innovation that this field has experienced in recent decades. This development is increasing as a result of the security concerns of several countries, which has pushed investment in this area and the widespread use of biometric solutions in several social and legal fields.

As shown by the statistics in Figure 3 between 2007 and 2015, there has been a considerable increase in the share of the private sector market due to the growing need for biometric solutions in this sector especially for smartphone and camera manufacturers.

According to ABI Research [2], the global biometric market will break the $30 billion mark by 2021, 118% higher than the 2015 market. In this context, consumer electronics, and smartphones in particular, are boosting the biometric sector: it is expected to sell two billion onboard fingerprint sensors in 2021, for an average annual increase of 40% in 5 years.

3.3 Biometric systems

4. Performance of biometric systems

4.1 Performance evaluation

For the evaluation of the precision of a biometric system, which makes it possible to measure these performances, numerous attempts have been made on the system, and all the similarity scores are saved.

By applying the variable score threshold to similarity scores, the pairs of false recognition rate (FRR) and false acceptance rate (FAR) can be calculated. The false recognition rate, or FRR, is the measure of the likelihood that the biometric system will incorrectly reject an access attempt by an authorized user. It is stated as the ratio of the number of false recognitions divided by the number of identification attempts. On the other hand, the false acceptance rate, or FAR, is the measure of the likelihood that the biometric system will incorrectly accept an access attempt by an unauthorized user. It is stated as the ratio of the number of false acceptances divided by the number of identification attempts.

The results are presented either as such pairs, i.e., FRR at a certain level of FAR or as the graph in Figure 5. The rates can be expressed in several ways, for example, in percentages (1%), in fractions (1/100), in decimal format (0.01), or using powers of ten ( 10 p 2 ). When comparing two systems, the most accurate shows a lower FRR equal to FAR level. Some systems do not report the similarity score, only the decision. In this case, it is only possible to win a single FRR/FAR pair (and not a continuous series) as a result of a performance evaluation. If the mode of operation (the security level) is adjustable (i.e., we have a means of controlling the scoring threshold used internally), the performance evaluation can be performed repeatedly in different modes to get other FRR/FAR pairs.

4.2 Evaluation mode

The biggest disadvantage of technological evaluations is that they do not necessarily reflect the final conditions of use of the system. For this reason, it is important to collect a set of samples of the conditions of use of the target system when preparing an assessment.

4.3 Database

Registered samples used in technology assessments are collected in databases. Data collection is performed using a group of volunteers, at least some of whom provide multiple acquisitions of the same biometric modality (e.g., the same finger) to have relevant attempts. To make collection efficient, samples of several objects can be collected from each volunteer, for example, every ten fingers. The characteristics of the database have a great impact on the results of an evaluation. As previously stated, with the exception of the capabilities of the biometric algorithm, the amount of available information can be used to characterize the objects.

4.4 Degree of confidence

To be able to make an assertion about the FRR 1% @ FAR 1 / 1 000 000 (i.e., when the system operates in a mode where one out of one million impostor attempts is-falsely-considered a match, one percent of the genuine attempts would fail) it at least one million impostor attempts (user sticking perfectly to another person’s template). It is not difficult to understand that the uncertainty of such an assertion would be rather high. The result depends heavily on how the two most similar samples in the database are scored. When comparing and viewing a DET (detection error trade-off) graph, it is important to understand that the uncertainty is higher on the side of the edges of the image. The number of comparisons made is only an important factor affecting confidence. The key to getting better statistical significance is to make as many uncorrelated attempts as possible.

5. Applications of biometric systems