An introduction to multibiometrics

Information fusion refers to the reconciliation of evidence presented by multiple sources of information in order to generate a decision. In the context of biometrics, evidence reconciliation plays a pivotal role in enhancing the recognition accuracy of human authentication systems and is referred to as multibiometrics. Multibiometric systems combine the information presented by multiple biometric sensors, algorithms, samples, units, or traits. Besides enhancing matching performance, these systems are expected to improve population coverage, deter spoofing and impart fault-tolerance to biometric applications. This introductory paper enumerates the various sources of biometric information that can be consolidated as well as the different levels of fusion in a biometric system. The role of using ancillary information such as biometric data quality and soft biometric traits (e.g., height) to enhance the performance of these systems is also discussed. It is becoming increasingly apparent that multibiometric systems will play a pivotal role in establishing identity in the 21st century.