FEATURE SECURITY AND COMMERCIAL SENSING g
is therefore certified to prevent ingress of moisture and dust, and be vandal resistant. It also has a built-in thermostat controlled heating system, enabling the reader to operate from -20˚C to +70˚C. ‘The reader head itself contains no data,’ explained Ramsay. ‘This is held on the secure side of the premises and can be up to 90 metres away. The data from reader head to Ievo interface board can be encrypted.’ The reader also offers certified spoof detection and can scan through dirt, dust, grease, oil, water and even some latex gloves, he adds. The ultimate has been approved for use by the UK Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure. Subsurface biometric data are important because two-dimensional fingerprint images are more susceptible to spoofing said Giovanni Milione, a researcher at NEC Laboratories America, in New Jersey. He adds that fingerprints can change, for example through physical or chemical abrasion in the course of work in construction, or even in offices. Milione and his colleagues at the University at Buffalo, are seeking to get under people’s skins, scanning the blood vessels in their fingers using photoacoustic tomography.
Next Biometrics’ thermal fingerprint sensors could enable smart bank cards Here to stay
Photoacoustic tomography is already commonly used for cancer detection and other disease diagnoses that analyse the density of blood vasculature. ‘Photoacoustic tomography is less harmful than x-rays, not as expensive as MRIs, and gets better imaging resolution than ultrasound,’ Milione said. But no one had thought about putting biometric authentication and photoacoustic tomography together, he added, in part because it seemed likely to be more expensive than a conventional fingerprint biometric authentication device. ‘We’re always thinking about biometrics. So, using photoacoustic tomography for biometric authentication was natural.’ Photoacoustic tomography scans tissues
with lasers, heating up their blood vessels, which creates ultrasonic shockwaves. They detect the ultrasonic signals, and use an algorithm to work out where they came from. ‘This algorithm is not too different from what your brain and ears use to determine if a sound comes from your left, your right, in front of you or behind you,’ he said. ‘Putting all that together, a 3D map/ image of the finger can be obtained’ in just a few seconds. Researchers had previously captured photoacoustic tomographic images of the blood vessels in fingertips. ‘The ability to get biometric authentication results anywhere near what is needed for commercial use was something that we were not sure of,’ Milione says. ‘Our work
12 Electro Optics April 2021
‘It is reasonable to expect the cost of a photoacoustic tomography-based biometric authentication device can be made much closer to the cost of conventional finger biometric devices’
proved it is possible. We measured very impressive authentication accuracy and anti-spoofing. We also proved it with a photoacoustic tomography device that was less expensive than those that are typically used for other biomedical applications, such as cancer detection.’ The NEC team could produce economical
devices because lasers and ultrasound are already used for many applications. ‘The costs of those things are steadily
decreasing due to continued development and mass production,’ said Milione. ‘For example, lidar is now standard on some models of the latest generation of iPhones. ‘Therefore, it is reasonable to expect
the cost of a photoacoustic tomography- based biometric authentication device can be made to be much closer to the cost of conventional finger biometric devices in the not-too-distant future, and maybe economical enough for consumer devices.’
In the near future, the NEC team is ‘almost certain’ that it can develop a photoacoustic tomography based biometric authentication device whose cost is reasonable for certain non-consumer applications. These might include border control, access control to critical facilities, and government applications that need high levels of security. The team will also continue to reduce the costs of the approach, and seek to deploy the technology in a wider range of people and environments. This advance comes as fingerprint
authentication in some consumer devices, such as iPhones, has been replaced by facial recognition. But Next Biometrics’ Hakan Persson doesn’t think that means the technology is under broader threat. ‘Fingerprints are here to stay,’ he said. While fingerprints are perhaps the most
effective and secure way of capturing the identity of an individual, he expected to see them increasingly used with other recognition schemes. ‘We already see that with face and
fingerprint working in conjunction. You will use different modalities, like for instance, fingerprint, face, you can use behaviour. They have different advantages. In order to create an always-authenticated situation, depending on what kind of use case and what kind of situation you actually are in, you will use one or several modes in combination.’ EO
@electrooptics |
www.electrooptics.com
NEXT Biometrics
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