Finger Vein Image Registration Based on Genetic Algorithm

Recently, finger vein sensors have been embedded in all kinds of electronic devices for personal identification, such as intelligent door locks and attendance machines. The embedded sensors are generally small, thus capturing only part of the finger vein. However, prior studies have focused on near-full finger vein recognition, without considering the partial finger vein image caused by the small imaging window of the finger vein sensor. This paper aims to study personal identification based on partial finger vein images, known as small-area finger vein recognition. The effect of the small-area finger vein on recognition performance is first analyzed by cutting out the local part from the near-full finger vein image to model a small-area finger vein image. Second, a small-area finger vein database is built using a commercial finger vein imaging device, in which the vein pattern from approximately one-third of one adult finger is captured. To explore more discriminative information from small-area finger vein images, we propose a locality-constrained consistent dictionary learning (LCDL) method to fuse multiple features for small-area finger vein recognition. Finally, the proposed method is evaluated on the self-built small-area finger vein database and four synthetic small-area finger vein databases. Experimental results show the promising recognition performance of the proposed method.

Recent years have seen a plenty of personal identification methods with different biometrics such as finger pattern, face, palm-print and vein. The majority of these methods focus on complex image data projections and transforms in Fourier space, wavelet space or other domains, which usually bring heavy load in computation and difficult understanding in perceptual intuition. Moreover, these methods, oriented to multiple samples learning, are constricted usually in application. Among so much biometrics, vein, as a living feature with high anti-counterfeiting capability, has attracted considerable attention. In this paper, we propose a structured personal identification approach using finger vein Location and Direction Coding(LDC). First of all, we design a finger vein imaging device with near-infrared(NIR) light source, by which a database for finger vein images is established. Subsequently, we make use of the brightness difference in the finger vein image to extract the vein pattern. Furthermore, finger vein LDC is proposed and performed, which creates a structured feature image for each finger vein. Finally, the structured feature image is utilized to conduct the personal identification on our image database for finger vein, which includes 440 vein images from 220 different fingers. The equal error rate of our method for this database is 0.44%.

Finger vein verification is a promising biometric pattern for personal identification in terms of security and convenience. The recognition performance of this technology heavily relies on the quality of finger vein images and on the recognition algorithm. To achieve efficient recognition performance, a special finger vein imaging device is developed, and a finger vein recognition method based on sparse representation is proposed. The motivation for the proposed method is that finger vein images exhibit a sparse property. In the proposed system, the regions of interest (ROIs) in the finger vein images are segmented and enhanced. Sparse representation and sparsity preserving projection on ROIs are performed to obtain the features. Finally, the features are measured for recognition. An equal error rate of 0.017% was achieved based on the finger vein image database, which contains images that were captured by using the near-IR imaging device that was developed in this study. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is faster and more robust than previous methods.

Exploring finger vein based personal authentication for secure IoT

Finger vein recognition has become a research hotspot in the field of biometrics due to its advantages of non-contact acquisition, unique information, and difficulty in terms of forging or pirating. However, in the real-world application process, the extraction of image features for the biometric remains a significant challenge when the captured finger vein images suffer from blur, noise, or missing feature information. To address the above challenges, we propose a novel deep reinforcement learning-based finger vein image recovery method, DRL-FVRestore, which trained an agent that adaptively selects the appropriate restoration behavior according to the state of the finger vein image, enabling continuous restoration of the image. The behaviors of image restoration are divided into three tasks: deblurring restoration, defect restoration, and denoising and enhancement restoration. Specifically, a DeblurGAN-v2 based on the Inception-Resnet-v2 backbone is proposed to achieve deblurring restoration of finger vein images. A finger vein feature-guided restoration network is proposed to achieve defect image restoration. The DRL-FVRestore is proposed to deal with multi-image problems in complex situations. In this paper, extensive experimental results are conducted based on using four publicly accessible datasets. The experimental results show that for restoration with single image problems, the EER values of the deblurring network and damage restoration network are reduced by an average of 4.31% and 1.71%, respectively, compared to other methods. For images with multiple vision problems, the EER value of the proposed DRL-FVRestore is reduced by an average of 3.98%.

Finger Vein Recognition System (FVRS) is a biometric technology that identifies or verifies an individual based on unique vein patterns. Region of interest (ROI) extraction is one of the essential steps in FVRS. Current ROI extraction methods cannot extract an accurate ROI for a finger vein image with non-uniform background illumination. In this paper, we propose a new ROI extraction method that is immune to non-uniform background illumination. To detect the edge of the finger for the ROI extraction, we utilise watershed segmentation with distance transform and Canny edge detector. Experimental results show that the proposed ROI extraction method can extract consistent ROI from a finger vein image with non-uniform background illumination.

Finger vein recognition, which is a promising biometric method for identity authentication, has attracted significant attention. Considerable research focuses on transmission-type finger vein recognition, but this type of authentication is difficult to implement in mobile consumer devices. Therefore, reflection-type finger vein recognition should be developed. In the reflection-type vein recognition field, the majority of researchers concentrate on palm and palm dorsa patterns, and only a few pay attention to reflection-type finger vein recognition. Thus, this paper presents reflection-type finger vein recognition for biometric application that can be integrated into mobile consumer devices. A database is built to test the proposed algorithm. A novel method of region-of-interest localization for a finger vein image is introduced, and a scheme for effectively extracting finger vein features is proposed. Experiments demonstrate the feasibility of reflection-type finger vein recognition.

In this study, the authors propose a multimodal biometric system by combining the finger knuckle and finger vein images at feature‐level fusion using fractional firefly (FFF) optimisation. Biometric characteristics, like finger knuckle and finger vein are unique and secure. Initially, the features are extracted from the finger knuckle and finger vein images using repeated line tracking method. Then, a newly developed method of feature‐level fusion using FFF optimisation is used. This method is utilised to find out the optimal weight score to fuse the extracted feature sets of finger knuckle and finger vein images. Thus, the recognition is carried out by the fused feature set using layered k‐SVM (k‐support vector machine) which is newly developed by combining the layered SVM classifier and k‐neural network classifier. The experimental results are evaluated and the performance is analysed with false acceptance ratio, false rejection ratio and accuracy. The outcome of the proposed FFF optimisation system obtains a higher accuracy of 96%.

Compared with single biometric recognition, multimodal biometric recognition based on fingerprint and finger vein has been widely considered because of its convenient sample collection, high security and accurate recognition. However, according to our investigation, there is no public dataset of fingerprint and finger vein collected at the same time. The existing work uses fingerprint datasets and finger vein datasets from different sources for research, besides the researchers data from building their own equipment, which lacks consideration of practical applications. This is not conducive to the promotion of multibiometric technology based on finger. To promote research on multimodal biometric recognition based on fingerprint and finger vein, we design a finger collection device and introduce a new dataset, NUPT-FPV. It is the first public dataset to collect fingerprint and finger vein simultaneously in real-world applications. NUPT-FPV obtained 840 finger information from 140 volunteers, each finger was collected 20 times (collected in two sessions), and 33600 fingerprint and finger vein images were obtained. In addition, we propose a novel multimodal fusion method based on a convolutional neural network as a benchmark. Extensive experiments were conducted to verify the necessity of our dataset. Through the released dataset and benchmark, we hope to further promote the development of multimodal biometrics based on fingerprint and finger vein.

Finger vein is a new and secure biometric for personal authentication due to its line-structure network with abundant local and orientation features. However, these features cannot be well represented by the existing local descriptors. To effectively utilize these rich orientation features in finger vein images, this paper proposes a new local descriptor, namely, pyramid histogram of double competitive pattern (PHDCP). For a finger vein image, the PHDCP first obtains a bank of filtered images using Gabor filters with large kernel size and rich orientations, by which the local line features are captured. Then, the orientation orders with the largest and smallest responses, which are the most robust features, are selected to generate an encoded map. Finally, a column-partition-based pyramid histogram extraction method is presented to capture the hierarchical features from the encoded image. Numerical experiments are conducted on two public finger vein data sets, MMCBNU_6000 and UTFVP. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed PHDCP performs much better than the existing local descriptors.

Vascular pattern based biometric recognition is gaining more and more attention, with a trend towards contactless acquisition. An important requirement for conducting research in vascular pattern recognition are available datasets. These datasets can be established using a suitable biometric capturing device. A sophisticated capturing device design is important for good image quality and, furthermore, at a decent recognition rate. We propose a novel contactless capturing device design, including technical details of its individual parts. Our capturing device is suitable for finger and hand vein image acquisition and is able to acquire palmar finger vein images using light transmission as well as palmar hand vein images using reflected light. An experimental evaluation using several well-established vein recognition schemes on a dataset acquired with the proposed capturing device confirms its good image quality and competitive recognition performance. This challenging dataset, which is one of the first publicly available contactless finger and hand vein datasets, is published as well.

For the finger vein recognition technology, the image of the finger vein is seriously missing, and the brightness contrast is not very obvious. A multi-exposure image fusion algorithm based on the camera response curve is proposed. Gaussian pyramid decomposition is performed on multiple finger vein images of different exposures in the same scene, the amount of information of the pixels is measured according to the camera response curve, and the Gaussian equation constrains the brightness of the fused image. Then a weight correction function is proposed to avoid the loss of image detail in overexposed or underexposed regions, and finally multi-scale and multi-resolution fusion of the image through Laplacian pyramid. Finally, according to the algorithm proposed in this paper, several sets of actual finger vein images were collected and analyzed. The effects of the algorithm were analyzed and evaluated from subjective and objective aspects. Experiments show that the proposed algorithm is simple and feasible, which not only preserves the image details of overexposed and under-exposed areas in the source image set, but also minimizes distortion.

To carry out the finger vein recognition effectively and quickly, according to the characteristics of horizontal and vertical two-dimensional linear discriminant analysis ((2D)2LDA) reducing the dimensions, an algorithm of finger vein recognition is proposed. The algorithm is two direction weighted (2D)2LDA ((W2D)2LDA) based on preprocessing image of the figure vein image. Firstly, the original finger vein image is pre-processed. Secondly, the normalized vein image is gotten. Finally, the algorithm of this paper is used to be recognized. The effect of the rate of cumulate eigenvalue for 2DLDA and (2D)2LDA is analyzed. The effect of the weighted value and the rate of cumulate eigenvalue on W2DLDA, W(2D)2LDA and (W2D)2LDA are analyzed as well. Experimental results on our database of finger vein images show that the method presented achieves high recognition accuracy. The redundant information of eigenvectors extracted by (2D)2LDA is restrained strongly, and the bi-direction weighted effect is better than the one direction weighted effect. The average recognition rate of (W2D)2LDA is higher than 2DLDA, W2DLDA, (2D)2LDA and W(2D)2LDA.

Finger vein recognition is a promising biometric authentication technique that depends on the unique features of vein patterns in the finger for recognition. The existing finger vein recognition methods are based on minutiae features or binary features such as LBP, LLBP, PBBM etc. or from the entire vein pattern. However, the minutiae-based features cannot accurately represent the structural or anatomical aspects of the vein pattern. These issues with the minutia feature led to increased false matches. Recognition based on binary features have limitations such as increased false matches, sensitivity to the translation and rotation, security and privacy issues etc. A feature representation based on the anatomy of vein patterns can be an alternative solution to improve the recognition performance. In the IJCB 2020 conference, we showed that every finger vein image contains one or more of a kind of 4 special vein patterns which we refereed as Fork, Eye, Bridge, and Arch (FEBA). In this paper, we further enlarge this set to 6 vein patterns (F <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sub> F <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> EB <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sub> B <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> A) by identifying two variations in the Fork and Bridge vein patterns. Based on 6 anatomical features of the possible 6 vein patterns in a vein image, we define a 6 × 6 feature matrix representation for finger vein images. Since this feature representation is based on the anatomical properties of the local vein patterns, it provides template security. Further we show that, the proposed feature representation is invariant to scaling, translation, and rotation changes. The experimental results using two open datasets and an in-house dataset show that the proposed method has a better recognition performance when compared to the existing approaches with an EER around 0.02% and an average recognition accuracy of 98%.

Low-quality finger vein images seriously affect the performance of the recognition system. Aiming at filtering high- and low-quality finger vein images, this paper presents a finger-vein image quality assessment method based on light-CNN (convolutional neural network). The previous quality assessment method aims to establish a model that is consistent with the evaluation effect of the human visual system. In contrast, our model further evaluates the quality of the finger vein image for the purpose of distinguishing whether the image contains rich and stable vein characteristics. The rich and stable vein characteristics in finger vein images play a more important role in practical applications. First, the finger vein image is automatically annotated based on a traditional finger vein image quality assessment method; secondly, the finger vein image is cut into image blocks to expand the training set, and the image block instead of the entire image is input to the CNN; then, the network and its variants are trained; in the final test, the average quality score of multiple image blocks from an image is the final quality score of the image. The experimental results show that the proposed light-CNN accurately identifies high and low quality images and significantly outperforms existing approaches in terms of distinguishing whether there are rich and stable vein characteristics in the image.