Information fusion in biometrics

Abstract

User verification systems that use a single biometric indicator often have to contend with noisy sensor data, restricted degrees of freedom and unacceptable error rates. Attempting to improve the performance of individual matchers in such situations may not prove to be effective because of these inherent problems. Multimodal biometric systems seek to alleviate some of these drawbacks by providing multiple evidences of the same identity. These systems also help achieve an increase in performance that may not be possible by using a single biometric indicator. This paper addresses the problem of information fusion in verification systems. Experimental results on combining three biometric modalities (face, fingerprint and hand geometry) are also presented. © Springer-Verlag 2001.