A Robust and Secure Palm Vessel Biometric Sensing System Based on Photoacoustics

In this paper, we propose a new palm vessel biometric sensing system based on photoacoustic imaging, which is an emerging technique that allows high-resolution visualization of optical absorption in deep tissue. Our system consists of an ultrasound (US) linear transducer array, an US data acquisition system, and an Nd:YAG laser emitting 1064-nm wavelength. By scanning the array, we could get a 3-D image of palm vasculature. The 3-D image is further combined with our newly developed algorithm, Earth Mover’s Distance—Radiographic Testing, to provide precise matching and robust recognition rate. Compared to conventional vein sensing techniques, our system demonstrates deeper imaging depth and better spatial resolution, offering securer biometric features to fight against counterfeits. In this paper, we imaged 20 different hands at various poses and quantified our system performance. We found that the usability and accuracy of our system are comparable to conventional biometric techniques, such as fingerprint imaging and face identification. Our technique can open up avenues for better liveness detection and biometric measurements.