Offline Handwritten Signature Verification Based on Local Ridges Features and Haar Wavelet Transform

Abstract

Multiple applications use offline handwritten signatures for human verification. This fact increases the need for building a computerized system for signature recognition and verification schemes to ensure the highest possible level of security from counterfeit signatures. This research is devoted to developing a system for offline signature verification based on a combination of local ridge features and other features obtained from applying two-level Haar wavelet transform. The proposed system involves many preprocessing steps that include a group of image processing techniques (including: many enhancement techniques, region of interest allocation, converting to a binary image, and Thinning). In feature extraction and analysis stages, a combination of local ridge features and other features obtained from the details of Haar wavelet subbands are extracted. Each wavelet sub-band image is fragmented into blocks with overlap and then the local features and wavelet energies are extracted from each block. Experiments were performed using a database of 600 signature prints collected from 100 persons, (i.e., 6 samples per person). The recognition accuracy of the system was the optimum (100%) using two decomposition levels. For verification purposes, the False Reject Rate for the system was (0.025%) while False Acceptable Rate was (0.03%) respectively.