Hand-Shape Biometrics Combining the Visible and Short-Wave Infrared Bands

This paper proposes a hand-shape biometric device with two sensors, respectively working in the visible and 1470-nm bands. The inclusion of the 1470-nm band sensor is to improve both security and performance. The security is improved by including a spoof detector and the performance by combining both bands. The spoof detector combines three skin detection indices obtained by comparing the reflectance of the hand image in the red, green, and blue bands with that from the 1470-nm band. The hand tissues reflect the visible radiation while absorbing the 1470-nm radiation. The band combination is carried out at a score level which reduces the error rate because different images were obtained under different physical principles (reflection and absorption). The system performance has been evaluated with a database containing 10 acquisitions from each of a group of 100 users and 390 acquisitions from 62 imitated hands made of different materials. The experimental results confirm both security and performance improvement.