Decision Fusion for Multimodal Biometrics Using Social Network Analysis

This paper presents for the first time decision fusion for multimodal biometric system using social network analysis (SNA). The main challenge in the design of biometric systems, at present, lies in unavailability of high-quality data to ensure consistently high recognition results. Resorting to multimodal biometric partially solves the problem, however, issues with dimensionality reduction, classifier selection, and aggregated decision making remain. The presented methodology successfully overcomes the problem through employing novel decision fusion using SNA. While several types of feature extractors can be used to reduce the dimension and identify significant features, we chose the Fisher Linear Discriminant Analysis as one of the most efficient methods. Social networks are constructed based on similarity and correlation of features among the classes. The final classification result is generated based on the two levels of decision fusion methods. At the first level, individual biometrics (face or ear or signature) are classified using matching score methodology. SNA is used to reinforce the confidence level of the classifier to reduce the error rate. In the second level, outcomes of classification based on individual biometrics are fused together to obtain the final decision.