On-line signature verification by dynamic time-warping

In this paper, we discuss an on-line signature verification system based on dynamic time-warping (DTW). The DTW-algorithm originates from the field of speech recognition, and has been applied successfully in the signature verification area more than once. However, until now, few adaptations have been made in order to take the specific characteristics of signature verification into account. According to us, one of the most important differences is the availability of a rather large number of reference patterns, making it possible to determine which parts of a reference signature are important and which are not. By disconnecting the DTW-stage and the feature extraction process we are able to deal efficiently with this extra amount of information. We demonstrate the benefits of our approach by building and evaluating a complete system.