Integrating a wavelet based perspiration liveness check with fingerprint recognition

It has been shown that fingerprint scanners can be deceived very easily, using simple, inexpensive techniques. In this work, a countermeasure against such attacks is enhanced, that utilizes a wavelet based approach to detect liveness, integrated with the fingerprint matcher. Liveness is determined from perspiration changes along the fingerprint ridges, observed only in live people. The proposed algorithm was applied to a data set of approximately 58 live, 50 spoof and 28 cadaver fingerprint images captured at 0 and 2s, from each of three different types of scanners, for normal conditions. The results demonstrate perfect separation of live and not live for the normal conditions. Without liveness module the commercially available verifinger matcher is shown to give equal error rate (EER) of 13.85% where false reject rate is calculated for genuine-live users and false accept rate is for genuine-not live, imposter-live and imposter-not live. The integrated system of fingerprint matcher and liveness module reduces EER to 0.03%. Results are also presented for moist and dry fingers simulated by glycerin and acetone, respectively. The system is further tested using gummy fingers and various deliberately simulated conditions including pressure change and adding moisture to the spoof to analyze the strength of the liveness algorithm. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.