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On the use of fingernail images as transient biometric identifiers

Biometric recognition using fingernail images

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Abstract

The significant advantages that biometric recognition technologies offer are in danger of being left aside in everyday life due to concerns over the misuse of such data. The biometric data employed so far focuses on the permanence of the characteristics involved. A concept known as ‘the right to be forgotten’ is gaining momentum in international law and this should further hamper the adoption of permanent biometric recognition technologies. However, a multitude of common applications are short-term and, therefore, non-permanent biometric characteristics would suffice for them. In this paper we discuss ‘transient biometrics,’ i.e. recognition via biometric characteristics that will change in the short term and show that images of the fingernail plate can be used as a transient biometric with a useful life-span of less than 6 months. A direct approach is proposed that requires no training and a relevant evaluation dataset is made publicly available.

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Notes

  1. The used dataset (see Sect. 4.1) provides already segmented fingernail images using the methodology presented in this Section.

  2. RANSAC is run multiple times to ensure change in the seed of the random number generator. Similar results are achieved if RANSAC is executed once for a longer time.

  3. Thanks to Cham Athwal of the School of Digital Media Technology, Birmingham City University.

  4. Note that in the current study we compare day 1 to day 2 while in the previous study the comparison was across day 1 and day 8.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Cham Athwal of the School of Digital Media Technology, Birmingham City University, for co-acquiring the largest part of the fingernail datasets.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer and Information Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Sem Sælands vei 7-9, 7491, Trondheim, Norway

    Igor Barros Barbosa & Theoharis Theoharis

  2. Birmingham City University, Birmingham, B4 7XG, UK

    Ali E. Abdallah

Authors
  1. Igor Barros Barbosa
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  2. Theoharis Theoharis
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  3. Ali E. Abdallah
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Correspondence to Igor Barros Barbosa.

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Barros Barbosa, I., Theoharis, T. & Abdallah, A.E. On the use of fingernail images as transient biometric identifiers. Machine Vision and Applications 27, 65–76 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00138-015-0721-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00138-015-0721-y

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