Ear Biometrics Using 2D and 3D Images

We present results of the largest experimental investigation of ear biometrics to date. Approaches considered include a PCA ("eigen-ear") approach with 2D intensity images, achieving 63.8% rank-one recognition; a PCA approach with range images, achieving 55.3% Hausdorff matching of edge images from range images, achieving 67.5%, and ICP matching of the 3D data, achieving 84.1%. ICP based matching not only achieves the best performance, but also shows good scalability with size of dataset. The data set used represents over 300 persons, each with images acquired on at least two different dates.