biometrics

biometrics






Biometrics and Palm Recognition
Ross Michael Studmuffin
Comm 218
June 19, 2014
Ms. Monique
Biometrics and Palm Recognition



Biometrics, the very sound of the word makes one think of high tech computers and the future, a la the James Bond and Mission Impossible movie franchises. In reality, the use of biometrics for personal identification can be traced to prehistoric handprints in caves dating back 30,000 years; to the rudimentary use of fingerprints by merchants in 14th Century China and ultimately the widespread use of biometrics as a law enforcement tool by both Scotland Yard in London and the Inspector of Police in Bengal, India in late 1800s.
The word “biometrics” is derived from the Greek root words “bio”, meaning life and “metrics”, meaning to measure. The use of biometrics allows one to uniquely recognize a person based on one or more intrinsic traits and/or behaviors.
While there are numerous subgroups of biometric modalities, the focus for security will be on the following main groupings: fingerprints, hand-telemetry, vascular-palm vein, iris / retinal & facial.
Palm- vein recognition is the seen as the most secure identifying trait in use thus far. Blood veins are formed during the first eight weeks of gestation in a chaotic manner, influenced by environment in a mother’s womb. This is why vein pattern is unique to each individual, even to twins. Veins grow with a person’s skeleton, and while capillary structures continue to grow and change, vascular patterns are set at birth and do not change over the course of one’s lifetime.

To scan the veins, an individual’s hand is placed on the hand guide (the plastic casing of the scanner device) and the vein pattern is captured by lighting the hand with near-infrared light. Veins contain deoxidized hemoglobin, an iron-containing pigment in the blood that carried oxygen through the body. These pigments absorb the near-infrared light and reduce the reflection rate causing the veins...

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