Biometrics method for human identification using electrocardiogram

Abstract

This work exploits the feasibility of physiological signal electrocardiogram (ECG) to aid in human identification. Signal processing methods for analysis of ECG are discussed. Using ECG signal as biometrics, a total of 19 features based on time interval, amplitudes and angles between clinically dominant fiducials are extracted from each heartbeat. A test set of 250 ECG recordings prepared from 50 subjects ECG from Physionet are evaluated on proposed identification system, designed on template matching and adaptive thresholding. The matching decisions are evaluated on the basis of correlation between features. As a result, encouraging performance is obtained, for instance, the achieved equal error rate is smaller than 1.01 and the accuracy of the system is 99%. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009.