TABLE OF CONTENTS

Biometrics refers to the use of physiological or behavioral characteristics of a person through automated technological means to determine or verify the identity of that person. Physiological biometrics are the data gathered from direct measurement of the human body, obtained by means of various algorithms and methods that can uniquely identify that person. Examples include: fingerprint, hand geometry, iris, retinal, vein, voice, and facial imaging. Behavioral biometrics are, however, defined by analyzing specific actions of a person. These may include how a person talks, signs their name, walks, writes or types on a keyboard. Our work in the field of multimedia directly contributes to computational biometrics, both physiological and behavioral. Face recognition techniques and retina scan analysis are examples of contributions to the physiological biometrics. Gait analysis, where the person recognized by their activities, for instance manner of walking, is an example of where multimedia techniques play a crucial role.

From another perspective, biometric technologies can be categorized into active and passive techniques. Active biometrics include: fingerprint, hand geometry, retina scanning, and signature recognition technologies. Examples of passive biometrics are: voice recognition, iris recognition, and facial recognition. The first two are somewhat limited but the last, facial imaging, is truly passive.

Biometric technologies are becoming the foundation of a large number of highly secure identification and human verification solutions. In the identification mode (one to many), the biometric system compares the given individual to all individuals in the database and ranks the top possible matches. In a verification mode (one to one), the system compares the given individual with who that individual says they are and provides a yes/no answer. Identification is generally associated with surveillance, whereas a clear application of verification is access control.

The need for biometric-based systems can be found in the government sector (federal, state and local), the military, and commercial applications. Many enterprise-wide network security infrastructures are already benefiting immensely from multimedia-based biometric technologies, including secure electronic banking and other financial transactions, retail sales, law enforcement, and government IDs. Biometric-based authentication applications include access control for workstation, network, and domain, data protection, application logon, and remote access to resources.