| 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. |
