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Which Biometric Identification system is best ?

By Howard Lancaster

Republish: EasyPublish™
Published: 03Oct2009
Word count: 561
Viewed: 263 time(s)

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Biometric technology identifies or verifies a person based on unique traits of that person either physiological or behavioral. Let's take a look at the most common.

Before any biometric system can work it needs to capture something unique about the person. This is termed "enrollment". If the system is at a place of work then each user in turn would enroll themselves into the system.

Iris or Eye recognition: If we "unrolled" an image of one of our eyes, it would pretty much read as our personal bar code. Also chances are no one else in the world would have that same pattern. The eye pattern is made up of Crypts, Radial Furrows, Pigment Frill, Papillary areas, Ciliary areas and Collarettes. The pattern of these features don't change significantly over the course of our lives and therefore can be deemed unique forever.

The biggest problem with Iris recognition is capturing the sample during enrollment. Users have to affix their stance and head alignment then stare directly at the camera. Once in place though the Iris scan can be relied upon to have less than zero rejections.

Fingerprints: Our fingerprints are formed during our time in the fetus and from there hardly change throughout our lives. Our fingers grow but our fingerprint patterns remain largely unchanged. Way back in the 1900's it was realized that even identical twins sharing the same DNA still had slightly differing prints. It is very safe to say that along with our eyes, our fingerprints belong solely to us.

Although different amongst us all there are similarities that can help form groupings for fingerprints. Features such as whorls, arches, and loops can classify fingerprints into these groups. In a large database, this similarity can be used as a key into the groups and speed up comparison and matching.

Fingerprint Biometrics are by far, the most common. Capturing the sample during enrollment is easy and a fingerprint system is relatively inexpensive to install.

Facial recognition: This by far is the most complex system to build, maintain and afford. Though we humans recognize faces very easily and quickly, how do we put that process into a machine ?

To grasp the size of the facial recognition complexities, imagine feeding every picture of every known terrorist or criminal into a database. Now, most of those pictures will probably be close ups, looking straight on, great lighting and somewhat posed. Now imagine at an airport people are walking, wearing hats, glasses, facial hair, changes in lighting, smiling, frowning etc. Just locating the face is the first hurdle to cross then making a reliable comparison to the database is the next.

Facial recognition at this point can be deemed an "early warning alarm" but cannot be relied upon to be exact 100% of the time.

The scope of facial recognition coupled with our ability to recognize faces easily tends to make more doubters than believers of facial recognition systems. From a cost standpoint these systems are expensive making them cost prohibitive to the masses.

Biometrics are constantly evolving and improving. The technology is sound as it is based on our unique qualities as human beings. If you turn up to work one day and there is a fingerprint scanner installed then embrace the technology as opposed to resist it. Biometrics will make you more secure than other systems designed to do the same.

Howard Lancaster is a freelance writer based in South Eastern Wisconsin. Over the years he has come to be an authoritative voice on Biometrics particularly their uses, strengths and weaknesses. His website offers Biometric security devices for cars, data and PC's and can be found at http://www.biometric-security-guards.com

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