Forearm vein pattern recognition using features from visible and NIR images

Forearm vein recognition is one of many available methods used for iden-tification. However, forearm veins can be considered more secure compared to otherbiometric traits because the veins are inside the human body and therefore not easilymanipulated. Veins possess several properties that make a good biometric feature forpersonal identification: 1) they are difficult to damage and modify; 2) they are difficultto simulate using a fake template; and 3) vein information can represent the liveness ofperson. Features were extracted from each pair of visible and NIR images. For the visibleimages, feature extraction was done using the Gabor filter. For the NIR forearm images,a crossing number was used to extract properties of the veins e.g. bifurcation. We presentthe results of the recognition of forearm veins patterns that show the suitability of themethod for biometric identification purposes.