Image analysis – Applications – Personnel identification
Reexamination Certificate
1998-04-06
2001-10-09
Mancuso, Joseph (Department: 2723)
Image analysis
Applications
Personnel identification
Reexamination Certificate
active
06301375
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for verifying the identification of individuals through their subcutaneous vein structures in the back of the hand, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for verifying a person's identity in an access control environment which obtains a vein pattern from subcutaneous vein structures in the back of the hand, extracts vein features from the vein pattern utilizing its branching characteristics, and compares the vein features with previously stored reference features of the person. In addition, the present invention relates to an integrated system for verification of thousands of persons based on the apparatus and method.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
In current access control systems for security and employee management, the identity of an individual is usually verified either by a magnetic strip on a card or by an RF signal from a contactless card. Recently, a high-cost smart card with high storage capacity has been researched and developed for practical use in access control systems. Practical recognition systems using the fingerprint or face of an individual are also being developed for application to access control systems requiring high security.
These current methods of verification in access control systems have their own disadvantages as well as advantages. For example, the method using card keys or smart cards cannot prevent unauthorized persons from using the cards, and in addition, the method is costly when it is used on a large scale because so many cards are necessary. Fingerprints may not be repeatable features to particular classes of persons such as physical laborers whose fingerprints are likely to be rubbed out due to hard work over a long time. Access control systems based on face recognition are difficult to apply on a large scale because of the inconvenience in installing and operating them.
In order to alleviate the inconvenience of prior methods, an apparatus for identifying individuals through their three dimensional hand shapes was invented and filed in Korea on Apr. 14, 1997. The invention is effective and simple to use. It is, however, necessary to update the data representing the hand shape of each individual periodically because the hand shape is subject to change with time. Errors may occur in verifying the identities of individuals who have not used the apparatus for a long time. Moreover, performance of the apparatus is susceptible to small changes of the position and orientation of the hand caused by elasticity of flesh of the hand even though the hand is fixated by an arbitrary means for fixation.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The general objective of the present invention is to eliminate the problems of existing methods and to provide a novel and effective apparatus and method for verifying the identification of an individual through his vein structure, which is a unique and time-invariant biometric feature of the individual, in the back of the hand.
A more specific objective of the present invention is to provide a method of verifying the identification of an individual by processing the vein image obtained from the vein structure in the back of the hand so as to obtain discriminative features as well as efficient image processing.
Another specific objective of the present invention is to provide an integrated verification system using an apparatus which can be used effectively and efficiently for the large numbers of individuals by storing the features of each individual into a separated corresponding database which is localized according to the access authority of each individual.
We accomplish our objectives for this invention by providing an apparatus for verifying the identity of a person through the vein structure in the back of the hand comprising the following: (1) means for detecting a reflected video signal from the back of hand, (2) means for capturing a still image from the detected video signal, (3) means for extracting a vein pattern through processing of the captured image, (4) means for storing the vein features for future recall and comparison, and (5) means for comparing the extracted features with the corresponding pre-stored reference features.
Our method for verifying the identity of a person using his subcutaneous vein structure in the back of the hand comprises the following steps: (1) determining a specific area within the image of the back of hand, (2) high-pass filtering a sub-image corresponding to the specific area, (3) binarizing the high-pass filtered sub-image, (4) extracting a vein pattern from the binarized sub-image after noise elimination, (5) computing vein features from the vein pattern, (6) comparing the vein features with the corresponding reference features which is pre-stored, and (7) determining the identity or non-identity of the person according to the result of the comparison.
The first step, determining the specific area within the image of the back of hand, comprises two sub-steps, binarizing the sub-image and choosing the largest rectangular area which is inscribed to the white-pixel area corresponding to the back of hand.
Our integrated verification system comprises the following three components: (1) a number of the verifying apparatus described in the above, (2) a global storage unit for centrally storing the vein features, and (3) a communication network through which data are exchanged between the verifying apparatuses and the global storage unit, wherein each verifying apparatus can be configured so that, when necessary, the comparison can be made using the reference features downloaded from the global storage unit over the communication network.
The identity of an individual is verified through the apparatus in the following way. When the person to be identified inserts and places his hand in an appropriate position in the interior of the apparatus, the portion of incident light source which is reflected from the back of the hand is detected by the detecting means which is located over the hand. Then, the capturing means produces a stable image of the back of the hand from the detected output signal of the detecting means. A vein pattern is obtained from the captured image by the extracting means through image processing techniques, high-pass filtering and binarization. Then a vein feature representing the branching and spreading characteristics is extracted from the vein pattern and is fed to the comparing means for comparison with the corresponding reference vein pattern of the person which is pre-stored in the storing means. The identity or non-identity of the person is determined according to the result of the comparison.
For efficient identification of individuals and management of the database involving large numbers of individuals, the integrated verification system is configured so that a verifying apparatus is located at each access site and, according to the access authority of each person, the vein features for future recall and comparison is stored in a corresponding verifying apparatus or global storage unit. When the person's access is restricted to one area, his features are recorded into the local memory in the verifying apparatus. On the other hand, When a person is permitted to have access to several or all areas, the features are stored in the global storage unit and are downloaded through the communication network to the verifying apparatus being used. The downloaded feature data are used by the verifying apparatus for comparison in determining the identity or non-identity of the person.
It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are provided for exemplary and explanatory purposes only, and intended to provide a further explanation of the invention as claimed.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4699149 (1987-10-01), Rice
patent: 4817183 (1989-03-01), Sparrow
patent: 5787185 (1998-07-01), Clayden
patent: 5805723 (1998-09-01), Fujiwara
patent: 5887140 (1999-03-01), Itsumi et al.
Baker & McKenzie
Bau Vikkram
BK Systems
Mancuso Joseph
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