Improved nger-knuckle-print authentication based on orientation enhancement

A. Morales, C.M. Travieso, M.A. Ferrer and J.B. Alonso

Presented is a new approach to person verication using ngerknuckle-prints (FKPs). It applies a Gabor lter to enhance the FKP information and a scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) to extract the features. Experiments with the most representative FKP public database conrm that the SIFT features obtained after Gabor enhancement of the principal nger knuckle lines improve the performance of the person identier.

where corresponds to the convolution operator and N (x, y, s) is a Gaussian function with bandwidth s. 2. Keypoint localisation: The keypoints ci = {xi , yi } are obtained by evaluating the maxima and minima of the difference-of-Gaussian function [5]: D(x, y, s) = L(x, y, k s) L(x, y, s) The number of keypoints selected depends on the FKP image. As can be seen in Fig. 1, keypoint location is closely related to the information in the FKP. 3. Keypoint descriptor: Each keypoint ci is dened by a descriptor vector di which contains the orientations and gradient magnitudes around the keypoint co-ordinates.

Introduction: Nowadays, hand recognition has become an important application in modern security systems because of its ease of data capture, its distinctiveness, its acceptance by the public and its lowlevel requirement for subject cooperation. Different intra-modalities for hand-biometric approaches have been researched during previous years such as hand geometry, palmprints and vein patterns. In this Letter, we focus on nger-knuckle-prints (FKPs). Previous work proposes different approaches based on texture or transformed domains information. For instance, [1] and [2] propose texture measures based on band-limited phase-only correlation and 2D Gabor lters competitive code obtaining equal error rates (EER) around 1.68 and 1.09%, respectively. On the basis of transformed domains, [3] and [4] propose methods such as Radon, speeded up robust features (SURF) and probabilistic Hough transform (PHT), each of which show promising identication results. The application of scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) as a feature approach has become a popular method for texture identication. As proposed in [5], SIFT is invariant to image scaling, rotation, and partially invariant to changes in illumination and projective distortion. When applied to hand palm texture, the resulting SIFT features outperform those methods based purely on texture [6]. However, when applied to FKP images, as in our experiments, the resulting performance is worse than that obtained with texture measures. We suppose that this is due to the FKP images being noisier than palm print images so that the SIFT features are not able to focus on the discriminative parallel knuckle lines. Our hypothesis is that if the knuckle lines are enhanced, the FKP person identier device based on SIFT descriptors will improve. Therefore, we propose a two-step FKP person identier system, which is: 1. to apply Gabor ltering to enhance the knuckle lines and 2. to work out the SIFT descriptors. We proceed as follows. FKP orientation enhancement: The knuckle lines are enhanced using the real 2D Gabor lter dened by: G(x, y, u, u, w) = 1 x2 + y2 exp 2w2 2pw2 cos{2p(ux cos u) + uy sin u} where u is the frequency of the sinusoidal wave, u denes the orientation selectivity of the function, and w is the standard deviation of the Gaussian envelope. In this Letter we use u = p/2, which orientates the Gabor lter so that it is orthogonal to the direction of the knuckle lines. Setting w = 2.0 and u = 0.1 enhances the knuckle lines. Greater robustness against brightness variation is ensured by turning the discrete Gabor lter to average zero. After the Gabor ltering, a contrast limited adaptive histogram equalisation (CLAHE) algorithm [7] is applied to improve the knuckle line contrast. Orientation enhanced SIFT (OE-SIFT) descriptors: The SIFT algorithm is based on selecting several keypoints with similar properties in the gallery and in the questioned images. Once selected, the number of common keypoints or matches between both images is the measure of similarity. The keypoint selection and characterisation is conducted in the following three steps [5]: 1. Scale-space extrema detection: The I(x,y) Gabor and equalised input FKP image is transformed to: L(x, y, s) = N (x, y, s) I(x, y)

Fig. 1 Left and right: SIFT over greyscale and orthogonal orientation enhanced FKP images, respectively

Verier: The verier evaluates the number of matches between a questioned and a gallery FKP image. Let cg = {xg , yg }M i i i i=1 and cq = {xq , yq }L be the set of gallery and questioned FKP keypoint coi i i i=1 ordinates, respectively. Their descriptors are dened as {dig }M and i=1 q L {di }i=1 , respectively. The distance between keypoint descriptors is calculated from: Dd (i, j) = dig djq
2

and the distance between co-ordinates is calculated from: Dc (i, j) = cg cq j j

2

where . is the Euclidean norm. We dene a match between a gallery cg and a questioned cq keypoint i j when Dd (i, j) , 1.3 and Dc (i, j) , 1.1 M cg cg 2 /M. The i j i=1 thresholds 1.3 and 1.1 are worked out heuristically. Nevertheless, our FKP approach is not particularly sensitive to these values, when they are in the ranges [1.2 to 1.6] and [1.0 to 1.3], respectively. The number of matches between the questioned and the gallery FKP is the similarity score. Experiments: We have used the Hong Kong Polytechnic FKP database, also used in [8], which can be freely downloaded [9]. This database is composed of the segmented FKP images of the left index nger, the left middle nger, the right index nger and the right middle nger of 165 subjects. Each FKP was acquired 12 times during two sessions giving a total of 165 12 4 7920 samples. For a fair comparison, we used the same experimental methodology as [8]: the gallery set is composed of the six images of the rst session while the probe set is composed of the remaining six images of the second session. As proposed in [8], three experiments were carried out. 1. Experiment 1: All the FKP images are involved. Each image in the probe set was matched against all the images in the gallery set. Therefore, the number of genuine scores and imposter scores is 23760 (165 4 6 6) and 15657840 (165 4 6 164 4 6), respectively. 2. Experiment 2: This experiment evaluates the performance of the proposed FKP feature extraction method on each type of nger. For each nger, the number of genuine scores and imposter scores is 5940 (165 6 6) and 974160(165 6 164 6), respectively. 3. Experiment 3: This experiment investigates the feature performance when combining information from two or more FKPs of the same person with a SUM based fusion rule [8].

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Results: Table 1 displays the results of the proposed OE-SIFT approach and the results of [8]. Comparing the results obtained with SIFT and OESIFT conrms that the FKP parallel lines enhancement improves the SIFT descriptors and the person identier scheme. Fig. 2 shows the ROC curves comparing both approaches.
100 GAA = 1-FRR, % 99 98 97 96 95 0 1 2 FAR, % 3 4 5 OE-SIFT SIFT

Conclusion: A novel feature approach to FKP authentication is proposed. It is based on applying the SIFT algorithm to FKP images ltered by a 2D Gabor lter and equalised. The 2D Gabor lter is oriented orthogonally to the knuckle lines to enhance their contrast and to allow SIFT descriptors for FKP based person identication. Results obtained provide improvements in the state of the art. Acknowledgment: This work is partially supported by the Spanish Government, under grant MCINN TEC2009-14123-C04-01. # The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2011 17 January 2011 doi: 10.1049/el.2011.0156 One or more of the Figures in this Letter are available in colour online. A. Morales, C.M. Travieso, M.A. Ferrer and J.B. Alonso (Signals and Communications Department, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Campus de Universita rio Tara s/n, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria E-35017, Spain) E-mail: ctravieso@dsc.ulpgc.es

Fig. 2 ROC curves obtained in experiment 1 with OE-SIFT and SIFT approaches

Table 1: EERs (%) comparison of FKP features obtained with OESIFT approaches with results in [8]
[8] SIFT OE-SIFT Experiment 1 All against all 1.47 2.02 0.85( 42%) Left index Left middle Right index Right middle Experiment 2 1.73 1.92 1.78 1.93 1.44 2.26 1.64 2.14 1.02( 0.43( 0.95( 0.91( 0.04( 0.13( 0.08( 0.02( 0( 41%) 76%) 34%) 44%) 80%) 50%) 60%) 92%) 0%)

References
1 Zhang, L., Zhang, L., and Zhang, D.: Finger-knuckle-print verication based on band-limited phase-only correlation, Lect. Notes Comput. Sci., 2009, 5702, pp. 141 148 2 Zhang, L., Zhang, L., and Zhang, D.: Finger-knuckle-print: a new biometric identier. Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Image Processing, Cairo, Egypt, 2009 3 Choras, M., and Ko, R.: Knuckle biometrics based on texture features. 2010 Int. Workshop on Emerging Techniques and Challenges for HandBased Biometrics (ETCHB), Istanbul, Turkey, 2010, pp. 1 5 4 Kumar, A., and Zhou, Y.: Personal identication using nger knuckle orientation features, Electron. Lett., 2009, 45, (20), pp. 1023 1025 5 Lowe, D.G.: Distinctive image features from scale-invariant keypoints, Int. J. Comput. Vis., 2004, 2, (60), pp. 91110 6 Morales, A., Ferrer, M.A., and Kumar, A.: Improved palmprint authentication using contactless imaging. Proc. BTAS 2010, Washington, DC, USA, September 2010, pp. 1 6 7 Zuiderveld, K.: Contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization, Graphic Gems IV (Academic Press Professional, San Diego, CA, 1994), pp. 474 485 8 Zhang, L., Zhang, L., Zhang, D., and Zhu, H.: Online nger-knuckleprint verication for personal authentication, Pattern Recognit., 2010, 43, (7), pp. 25602571 9 PolyU FKP Database, http://www.comp.polyu.edu.hk/~biometrics/ FKP.htm 10 Zhang, L., Zhang, L., Zhang, D., and Zhu, H.: Ensemble of local and global information for nger-knuckle-print recognition, Pattern Recognit., accepted June 2010

Experiment 3 L-index, l-middle 0.20 0.50 R-index, r-middle 0.26 0.46 L-index, r-index 0.20 0.36 L-middle, r-middle 0.27 0.47 All four 0 0.09

Recalling the state-of-the-art results obtained with the same database and experimental methodology, the OE-SIFT outperforms the best results claimed by [8], with texture based features, reducing the EER by 42%. It also outperforms in experiment 1 the results presented in [10] with BLPOC and CompCodes features with EER equal to 1.66 and 1.68%, respectively. Combining both features [10] claim an EER equal to 0.45%. The computation time for OE-SIFT feature extraction and matching is less than 1 second on a Pentium Dual-Core 1.66GHz with 2Gb RAM.

ELECTRONICS LETTERS 17th March 2011 Vol. 47 No. 6