Ear Biometrics

Abstract

A new class of biometrics based upon ear features is introduced for use in the development of passive identification systems. The availability of the proposed biometric is shown both theoretically in terms of the uniqueness and measurability over time of the ear, and in practice through the implementation of a computer vision based system. Each subject’s ear is modeled as an adjacency graph built from the Voronoi diagram of its curve segments. We introduce a novel graph matching based algorithm for authentication which takes into account the erroneous curve segments which can occur due to changes (e.g., lighting, shadowing, and occlusion) in the ear image. This new class of biometrics is ideal for passive identification because the features are robust and can be reliably extracted from a distance.