Marco Gamassi

Privacy-Aware Biometrics: Design and Implementation of a Multimodal Verification System

A serious concern in the design and use of biometric authentication systems is the privacy protection of the information derived from human biometric traits, especially since such traits cannot be replaced. Combining cryptography and biometrics, several recent works proposed to build the protection in the biometric templates themselves. While these solutions can increase the confidence in biometric systems when biometric information is stored for verification, they have been shown difficult to apply to real biometrics. In this work we present a biometric authentication technique that exploits multiple biometric traits. It is privacy-aware as it ensures privacy protection and allows the extraction of secure identifiers by means of cryptographic primitives. We also discuss the implementation of our approach by considering, as a significant example, the combination of iris and fingerprint biometrics and present experimental results obtained from real data. The implementation shows the feasibility of the scheme in practical applications.

Quality assessment of biometric systems: a comprehensive perspective based on accuracy and performance measurement

Despite the efforts of the international biometric community, the measurement of the accuracy of a biometric system is far from being completely investigated and, eventually, standardized. This paper presents a critical analysis of the accuracy and performance measurement of a biometric system. Current approaches to the problem and procedural error have been described and criticized. Finally, a methodology for the measurement of the accuracy of biometric systems with nonsymmetric matching function will be proposed and discussed.

Accuracy and performance of biometric systems

Although efforts of the entire international biometric community, the measurement of accuracy of a biometric system is far to be completely investigated and, eventually, standardized. The paper presents a critical analysis of the measurement of an accuracy and performance of a biometric system. Current approaches to the problem and procedural error have been described and criticized. Finally, a methodology for the measurement of the accuracy of biometric system with not-symmetric matching function is proposed and discussed.

A Multi-biometric Verification System for the Privacy Protection of Iris Templates

Biometric systems have been recently developed and used for authentication or identification in several scenarios, ranging from institutional purposes (border control) to commercial applications (point of sale). Two main issues are raised when such systems are applied: reliability and privacy for users. Multi-biometric systems, i.e. systems involving more than a biometric trait, increase the security of the system, but threaten users’ privacy, which are compelled to release an increased amount of sensible information. In this paper, we propose a multi-biometric system, which allows the extraction of secure identifiers and ensures that the stored information does not compromise the privacy of users’ biometrics. Furthermore, we show the practicality of our approach, by describing an effective construction, based on the combination of two iris templates and we present the resulting experimental data.

Fingerprint local analysis for high-performance minutiae extraction

The paper presents a novel approach to identify the minutiae present in a fingerprint image based on the analysis of the local properties. The typical patterns of minutiae called ridge termination and bifurcation are identified by studying the intensity along squared paths in the image. The presented algorithm works both on grey-level image and binarized image and, despite its simplicity, it achieves good accuracy and it can be a good candidate to be implemented in hardware or executed on simple hardware architectures, for example in biometric systems embedded in portable applications such as cellular phones and smart cards.

Personal identification and verification using multimodal biometric data

Several proposals have been formulated to combine cryptography and biometrics in order to secure data and to strengthen the personal authentication process, making the falsification of personal ID, like passports, more challenging. In this work we describe a system for personal identification and verification, based on the combination of multiple biometric readings and other user inputs. In such way authentication control can be performed and only allowed persons can access the resources which must be protected. The method consists of two main phases: enrollment and verification. In the first phase the data extracted from user inputs are processed by the proposed system and stored the in a innovative non-reversible form. In the second phase, the stored data are combined with the biometric readings and other user inputs in order to identify and verify the identity of the person. The system does not rely on network access or databases to perform the verification/authentication phase

Privacy in Biometrics

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Biometric Traits and Privacy Biometric Templates Protection Privacy in Multimodal Systems An Exemplifying Scheme Conclusions References ]]>

A Classification Method for Wood Types using Fluorescence Spectra

The analysis of the wood types is important in many industrial sectors such as the furniture industries and the wood panel production. Different woods have different aspects, properties and costs. The analysis of the wood type is very important to guarantee that the final product has the required features and characteristics. Unfortunately, the analysis made by human experts is not rapid and it presents a not standardized accuracy due to the operators capabilities and tiredness. The presented paper shows how that it is effectively possible to accurately classify the wood types by the analysis of the fluorescence spectra in real time and during the production activities. In particular, the paper presents a prototype schema and a set of techniques suitable to extract features from the spectra and how to used the extracted feature to train an inductive classification system. Results show that a good accuracy in the classification can be achieved, and that the proposed setup can be used also in realtime industrial processes.

A high-level optimum design methodology for multimodal biometric systems

Biometric systems are designed by expert developers who look - with trial-and-error approaches - for reasonable solutions by considering the available hardware architecture, some - possibly conflicting - quality goals, and the application constrains. Typically drawbacks of these approaches are waste of time and results far from the optimum. We propose a new design methodology for multimodal biometric systems that applies high-level system design techniques to better structure the design procedure. The proposed methodology avoids the drawbacks of the common design practice and allows to create a flexible general-purpose and effective design environment for multimodal biometric systems.

A low-cost neural-based approach for wood types classification

In many applications such as the furniture and the wood panel production, the classification of wood kinds can provide relevant information concerning the aspect, the properties and the preparation procedures of the products. Usually, the wood kind classification is made by trained operators, but this solution suffers of important drawbacks: it is time consuming and it has low repeatability/accuracy since the classification is related to the operator experience and fatigue. In the literature, some attempts to solve this applicative problem by automatic systems are present, but, unfortunately, these solutions present complex measures and setups. In this paper, we present a novel approach for wood kinds classification based on a neural network system which exploits the emitted spectrum of the wood samples filtered with a bank of low-cost optical filters coupled with a set of photo detectors. The structure of the proposed system can be directly implemented in an embedded low-cost system. The results of the system simulations are very satisfactory and they demonstrate that this approach is feasible and very promising.