This paper proposes an improved vascular pattern extraction algorithm for person verification applications. The proposed direction-based vascular pattern extraction (DBVPE) algorithm is based on the directional information of vascular patterns. It applies two different filters to the input images: row vascular pattern extraction filter (RVPEF) for effective extraction of the abscissa vascular patterns and column vascular pattern extraction filter (CVPEF) for effective extraction of the ordinate vascular patterns. We use the combined output of both filters to obtain the final hand vascular patterns. Unlike the conventional hand vascular pattern extraction algorithm, the directional extraction approach prevents loss of the vascular pattern connectivity. To validate the DBVPE algorithm, we used a prototype system with a DSP processor. The prototype system shows approximately a three-times better false acceptance rate (FAR) than the conventional single filter algorithm.