| Determining the identity of a person is becoming critical in our vastly interconnected information society. As increasing number of biometrics-based identification systems are being deployed for many civilian and forensic applications, biometrics and its applications have evoked considerable interest. The current state of affairs is that the technical and technological literature about the overall state-of-the-art in biometrics is dispersed across a wide spectrum of books, journals, and conference proceedings. As biometrics emerges as a multi-billion dollar industry, there is a growing need for a comprehensive, consolidated, fair, and accessible overview of the biometrics technology and its implications to society from well-reputed information sources. This edited book is an attempt to disseminate the technological aspects and implications of biometrics. In particular, this book addresses the following needs. Survey the biometrics methods in commercial use and in research stage. Assess the capabilities and limitations of different biometrics. Understand the general principles of design of biometric systems and the underlying trade-offs. Understand the issues underlying the design of biometric systems.
Identify issues in the realistic evaluation of biometrics-based systems. • To recognize personal privacy and security implications of biometrics-based identification technology. To nurture synergies of biometric technology with the other existing and emerging technologies.
The book is organized as follows: Chapter 1 is a brief overview of the biometric technology and the research issues underlying the biometrics-based identification applications. A number of biometrics-based technologies are commercially available today and many more are being developed in the educational and commercial research laboratories world wide. Currently, there are mainly eight different biornetrics including face, fingerprint, hand geometry, iris, retinal pattern, signature, voice-print, and thermograms have actually been deployed for identification. In each of the next eight chapters (Chapters 2-9), the leading experts and pioneers of biometric technology describe a particular biometric, its characteristics, the specific problems underlying the design of an identification/authentication system based on that biometric, performance evaluation of the existing systems and open issues which need to be addressed. The next five chapters (Chapters 10-14) describe biometrics which are not yet commercially available but which are under active research for on-line identification: keystroke dynamics, dait, odor, ear, and DNA. |