THE EAR AS A BIOMETRIC?

Biometrics is the science of identifying or verifying the identity of a person based on physiological or behavioral characteristics. Biometric identification methods have proved to be very efficient, more natural and easy for users than traditional methods of human identification. Biometric authentication systems are essentially pattern recognition systems, the physiological characteristics being fingerprint, face, and hand geometry, DNA and iris recognition. The main aim of the project is to develop a biometric authentication system using the ear. The process will involve several steps from acquisition of the image to the point where a positive identification can be made using the system. The image will be acquired using a digital camera. The photo is then processed, stored and used for the identification process. After the raw data is obtained, the Region of Interest (ROI) which is the area containing the ear image is chosen. Feature extraction filters the uniqueness data out of the raw data and combines them into the biometric feature. The method applied for this is Edge detection Iris recognition is considered as one of the most reliable biometric authentication technique. An iris recognition system captures human eye image using a near infrared iris sensor which passes through three steps to be transformed into an iris template. These three steps are iris segmentation, iris normalization and iris feature encoding Recognition involves either verification or identification. Verification is one to one comparison where claim of an identity is verified, e.g., an employee of an office. On the contrary, identification is one to many comparison where an identity is watched against an entire database.