3-D palmprint modeling for biometric verification

Palmprint is a very unique and distinctive biometric trait because of features such as a person's inimitable principal lines, wrinkles, delta points, and minutiae. These constitute the main reasons why palmprint verification is considered as one of the most reliable personal identification methods. However, a clear majority of the research on palm-prints are concentrated on 2-D palmprint images irrespective of the fact that the human palm is a 3D-surface. While 2-D palmprint recognition has proved to be efficient in terms of verification rate, it has some essential downsides. These restrictions can adversely affect the performance and robustness of the palmprint recognition system. One of the possible solutions to resolve the limitations associated with 2-D palm print authentication systems is (i) to use a 3-D scanning system and to produce high quality 3-D images with depth information; (ii) to map 3-D palm-print images into 2-D images which may support the usage of 3-D images with both biometric palmprint 2-D image databases and 2-D palmprint recognition tools. The bloom of 3-D technologies has made it easier to capture and store 3-D images. The problem of a direct mapping approach is that a large section of the palm is hard-pressed on the scanner surface during 2-D based acquisition. This paper proposes a novel technique to unravel/map 3-D palm images to its equivalent 2-D palm-print image. This image can be then used to perform efficient and accurate 2-D identification/ verification. Experimental results and discussions will also be presented.