On the similarity of identical twin fingerprints

Reliable and accurate verification of people is extremely important in a number of business transactions as well as access to privileged information. Automatic verification methods based on physical biometric characteristics such as fingerprint or iris can provide positive verification with a very high accuracy. However, the biometrics-based methods assume that the physical characteristics of an individual (as captured by a sensor) used for verification are sufficiently unique to distinguish one person from another. Identical twins have the closest genetics-based relationship and, therefore, the maximum similarity between fingerprints is expected to be found among identical twins. We show that a state-of-the-art automatic fingerprint verification system can successfully distinguish identical twins though with a slightly lower accuracy than nontwins.