GAFAT INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

DEPARTEMENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

A Seminar Report

On

BIOMETRIC SYSTEMS

Proposed by:
NAME ID

1 Reduwan oli……………………………1250

2 Absira Mekit……………………….1214

3 Tarekegn Nemara……………………0972

4 Awoke Tilahun…………………………4025

5 Dereje Tadase………………………..0896

Debre Tabor, Ethiopia

April 2025

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Table of Contents

BIOMETRIC SYSTEMS .............................................................................................................................. 1

ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................................. 1

INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................................................2

WHY BIOMETRICS? .................................................................................................................................. 3

HOW DOES BIOMETRIC PROCESSES WORK? ..................................................................................... 3

BIOMETRIC SYSTEN ALGORITHM ........................................................................................................ 8

System requirements ................................................................................................................................... 10

THE APPLICATIONS OF BIOMETRIC SYSTEMS ................................................................................11

LIMITATIONS OF BIOMETRIC SYSTEMS ........................................................................................... 12

Advantages of Biometrics ........................................................................................................................... 13

Disadvantages of Biometrics ...............................................................................................................13

CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................................... 14

REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................................15

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 ABSTRACT

A biometric is defined as a unique, measurable, biological characteristic or trait for automatically

recognizing or verifying the identity of a human being. Statistically analyzing these biological
characteristics has become known as the science of biometrics. These days, biometric
technologies are typically used to analyze human characteristics for security purposes. Five of
the most common physical biometric patterns analyzed for security purposes are the fingerprint,
hand, eye, face, and voice. The use of biometric characteristics as a means of identification. In
this paper we will give a brief overview of the field of biometrics and summarize some of its
advantages, disadvantages, strengths, limitations, and related privacy concerns. We will also look
at how this process has been refined over time and how it currently works.

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INTRODUCTION

Humans have used body characteristics such as face, voice, gait, etc. for thousands of years to
recognize each other. Alphonse Bertillon, chief of the criminal identification division of the
police department in Paris, developed and then practiced the idea of using a number of body
measurements to identify criminals in the mid 19th century. Just as his idea was gaining
popularity, it was obscured by a far more significant and practical discovery of the
distinctiveness of the human fingerprints in the late 19th century. Soon after this discovery, many
major law enforcement departments embraced the idea of first “booking” the fingerprints of
criminals and storing it in a database (actually, a card file). Later, the leftover (typically,
fragmentary) fingerprints (commonly referred to as latents) at the scene of crime could be
“lifted” and matched with fingerprints in the database to determine the identity of the criminals.
Although biometrics emerged from its extensive use in law enforcement to identify criminals
(e.g., illegal aliens, security clearance for employees for sensitive jobs, fatherhood determination,
forensics, positive identification of convicts and prisoners), it is being increasingly used today to
establish person recognition in a large number of

civilian applications. What biological measurements qualify to be a biometric? Any human

physiological and/or behavioral characteristic can be used as a biometric characteristic as long as
it satisfies the following requirements:

 Universality: each person should have the characteristic;

 Distinctiveness: any two persons should be sufficiently different in terms of the
characteristic;
 Permanence: the characteristic should be sufficiently invariant (with respect to the
matching criterion) over a period of time;
 Collectability: the characteristic can be measured quantitatively. However, in a practical
biometric system (i.e., a system that employs biometrics for personal recognition)

A practical biometric system should meet the specified recognition accuracy, speed, and
resource requirements, be harmless to the users, be accepted by the intended population, and be
sufficiently robust to various fraudulent methods and attacks to the system.

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WHY BIOMETRICS?

A biometric system is essentially a pattern recognition system which makes a personal

identification by determining the authenticity of a specific physiological or behavioral
characteristic possessed by the user. An important issue in designing a practical system is to
determine how an individual is identified. Depending on the context, a biometric system can be
either a verification (authentication) system or an identification system. There are two different
ways to resolve a person's identity: verification and identification. Verification (Am I whom I
claim I am?) involves confirming or denying a person's claimed identity. In identification, one
has to establish a person's identity (Who am I? ). Each one of these approaches has its own
complexities and could probably be solved best by a certain biometric systems.

HOW DOES BIOMETRIC PROCESSES WORK?

The concept of biometric identification is simple. The system has some prestored data. When
you approach the system(say a fingerprint scanner),your finger is scanned and matched with a
record of your fingerprints already in its data base. Only when it finds a match, access is granted.
The concept might be simple but the process is quite ingenious.

Fingerprint Matching:

Among all the biometric techniques, fingerprint-based identification is the oldest method which
has been successfully used in numerous applications. Everyone is known to have unique,
immutable fingerprints. A fingerprint is made of a series of ridges and furrows on the surface of
the finger. The uniqueness of a fingerprint can be determined by the pattern of ridges and
furrows as well as the minutiae points.

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Minutiae points are local ridge characteristics that occur at either a ridge bifurcation or a ridge
ending.
Fingerprint matching techniques can be placed into two categories:
minutae-based and correlation based. Minutiae-based techniques first find minutiae points and
then map their relative placement on the finger. However, there are some difficulties when using
this approach. It is difficult to extract the minutiae points accurately when the fingerprint is of
low quality. Also this method does not take into account the global pattern of ridges and furrows.
The correlation-based method is able to overcome some of the difficulties of the minutiae-
based approach. However, it has some of its own shortcomings. Correlation-based techniques
require the precise location of a registration point and are affected by image translation and
rotation.

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Fingerprint matching based on minutiae has problems in matching different sized (unregistered)
minutiae patterns. Local ridge structures can not be completely characterized by minutiae. We
are trying an alternate representation of fingerprints which will capture more local information
and yield a fixed length code for the fingerprint. The matching will then hopefully become a
relatively simple task of calculating the Euclidean distance will between the two codes

Face Retrieval:

The face retrieval problem, known as face detection, can be defined as follows: given an
arbitrary black and white, still image, find the location and size of every human face it contains.
There are many applications in which human face detection plays a very important role: it
represents the first step in a fully automatic face recognition system, it can be used in image
database indexing/searching by content, in surveillance systems and in human-computer
interfaces. It also provides insight on how to approach other pattern recognition problems
involving deformable textured objects. At the same time, it is one of the harder problems in
pattern recognition.

Hand Geometry vs Fingerprints:

Unlike fingerprints, the human hand isn't unique. One can use finger length, thickness, and
curvature for the purposes of verification but not for identification. For some kinds of access
control like immigration and border control, invasive biometrics (eg., fingerprints) may not be
desirable as they infringe on privacy. In such situations it is desirable to have a biometric system
that is sufficient for verification. As hand geometry is not distinctive, it is the ideal choice.
Furthermore, hand geometry data is easier to collect. With fingerprint collection good frictional
skin is required by imaging systems, and with retina-based recognition systems, special lighting
is necessary. Additionally, hand geometry can be easily combined with other biometrics,
namely fingerprint. One can envision a system where fingerprints are used for (infrequent)
identification and hand geometry is used for (frequent) verification

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A Multimodal Biometric System Using Fingerprint, Face, and Speech:

A biometric system which relies only on a single biometric identifier in making a personal
identification is often not able to meet the desired performance requirements. Identification
based on multiple biometrics represents an emerging trend. We introduce a multimodal biometric
system, which integrates face recognition, fingerprint verification, and speaker verification in
making a personal identification. This system takes advantage of the capabilities of each
individual biometric. It can be used to overcome some of the limitations of a single biometrics.
Preliminary experimental results demonstrate that the identity established by such an integrated
system is more reliable than the identity established by a face recognition system, a fingerprint
verification system, and a speaker verification system.

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Retina and iris scanning:

Retina scanning, the rage of the 1970s and 1980s, has fallen into disfavor in recent years. The
TV series, Mission Impossible, romanticized the use of retina scanning, but in realty, the
technology is very intrusive. Retina scanning relies on the fact that the retina pattern of the
human eye is unique from individual to individual. In fact, the retina pattern of each eye is
unique. The problem with retina scanning is that it requires a light to be shone to the back of the
eye where the retina is located. As stated, this is an intrusive type of technology, and users are
generally not receptive to it. Consequently, retina scanning applications are often limited to
military and high security applications.

Iris scanning, a relatively newer form of eye geometry technology, is significantly less intrusive.
This technology relies on the fact that the iris pattern of each eye is unique. Because the iris is
found in the front of the eye, iris scanning is relatively non-intrusive because the iris pattern can
be picked up from a distance of up to two feet away. Examples of applications include replacing
passwords for logging onto networks, security cards for opening doors, PINs for ATMs, and the
like. In essence, any time some form of password or a key is required, iris scanning can be used
instead. The cost per system is still currently high, but like all computer applications, cost will
drop drastically and quickly.

BIOMETRIC SYSTEN ALGORITHM

A biometric system is essentially a pattern recognition system that operates by acquiring

biometric data from an individual, extracting a feature set from the acquired data, and comparing
this feature set against the template set in the database. Depending on the application context, a
biometric system may operate either in verification mode or identification mode:

 In the verification mode, the system validates a person’s identity by comparing the
captured biometric data with her own biometric template(s) stored system database. In
such a system, an individual who desires to be recognized claims an identity, usually via
a PIN (Personal Identification Number), a user name, a smart card, etc., and the system
conducts a one-toone comparison to determine whether the claim is true or not. Identity

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 verification is typically used for positive recognition, where the aim is to prevent multiple
people from using the same identity [26].
 In the identification mode, the system recognizes an individual by searching the
templates of all the users in the database for a match. Therefore, the system conducts a
one-to-many comparison to establish an individual’s identity (or fails if the subject is not
enrolled in the system database) without the subject having to claim an identity.
Identification is a critical component in negative recognition applications where the
system establishes whether the person is who she (implicitly or explicitly) denies to be.
The purpose of negative recognition is to prevent a single person from using multiple
identities [26]. Identification may also be used in positive recognition for convenience
(the user is not required to claim an identity). While traditional methods of personal
recognition such as passwords, PINs, keys, and tokens may work for positive recognition,
negative recognition can only be established through biometrics.

Figure 1. Block diagrams of enrollment, verification and identification tasks are shown using the
four main modules of a biometric system, i.e., sensor, feature extraction, matcher, and system
databas

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 System requirements

The objective of the Biometric Encryption algorithm is to provide a mechanism for the linking
and subsequent retrieval of a digital key using a biometric such as a fingerprint. This digital key
can then be used as a cryptographic key.

The important system requirements that apply to a key retrieval system using a fingerprint are
distortion tolerance, discrimination and security.

 Distortion tolerance is the ability of the system to accommodate the day-to-day

distortions of the fingerprint image. These distortions are due to behavioral changes
(positioning, rotation, and deformation), as well as environmental (ambient temperature
and humidity) and physiological (moisture content) conditions. A key retrieval system
must be able to consistently produce the correct key for the different expected versions of
a legitimate user’s fingerprint.

 Discrimination is the ability of a system to distinguish between all of the system users’
fingerprints. An attacker should produce an incorrect key when the attacker’s fingerprint
is combined with a legitimate user’s filter.

Security of the system means that neither the digital key, nor the legitimate user’s fingerprint,
can be independently extracted from any stored information.

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 THE APPLICATIONS OF BIOMETRIC SYSTEMS

The applications of biometrics can be divided into the following three main groups:

 Commercial applications such as computer network login, electronic data security,

ecommerce, Internet access, ATM, credit card, physical access control, cellular phone,
PDA, medical records management, distance learning, etc.
 Government applications such as national ID card, correctional facility, driver’s
license, social security, welfare-disbursement, border control, passport control, etc.
 Forensic applications such as criminal investigation, terrorist identification,
parenthood determination, missing children, etc. Traditionally, commercial
applications have used knowledge-based systems (e.g., PINs and passwords),
government applications have used token-based systems (e.g., ID cards and badges),
and forensic applications have relied on human experts to match biometric features.

Picture a)

picture b) picture c)

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The examples described above: -

a) The Immigration and Naturalization Service Accelerated Service System (INSPASS), which
is installed at major airports in the U.S., is based on hand geometry verification
b) Fingerprint-based door. Used to restrict access to premises.
c) A fingerprint verification system is used for computer and network.

LIMITATIONS OF BIOMETRIC SYSTEMS

The successful installation of biometric systems in various civilian applications does not imply
that biometrics is a fully solved problem. It is clear that there is plenty of scope for improvement
in biometrics. Biometric systems that operate using any single biometric characteristic have the
following limitations:

1. Noise in sensed data: The sensed data might be noisy or distorted. A fingerprint with a scar,
or a voice altered by cold are examples of noisy data. Noisy data could also be the result of
defective or improperly maintained sensors (e.g., accumulation of dirt on a fingerprint sensor) or
poor illumination of a user's face in a face recognition system.

2. Intra-class variations: This variation is typically caused by a user who is incorrectly

interacting with the sensor or when sensor characteristics are modified during the verification
phase.

3. Distinctiveness: While a biometric trait is expected to vary significantly across individuals,

there may be large inter-class similarities in the feature sets used to represent these traits. This
limitation restricts the discriminability provided by the biometric trait. Thus, every biometric trait
has some theoretical upper bound in terms of its discrimination capability.

4. Non-universality: While every user is expected to possess the biometric trait being acquired,
in reality it is possible for a user to not possess a particular biometric. A fingerprint biometric
system, for example, may be unable to extract features from the fingerprints of certain
individuals, due to the poor quality of the ridges. It has been estimated that as much as 4% of the

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population may have poor quality fingerprint ridges that are difficult to image with the currently
available fingerprint sensor system.

Advantages of Biometrics

1. Enhanced Security
Biometric traits are unique to each individual, making them difficult to replicate or steal
compared to traditional methods like passwords or PINs. This reduces the risk of
unauthorized access. For example, NIST reports false match rates for facial recognition
as low as 0.0001% in optimal conditions.
2. Convenience
Users don’t need to remember passwords or carry tokens. Authentication is quick, often
taking seconds, as seen in smartphone fingerprint or facial recognition systems. This
improves user experience, especially in high-security applications like banking or
healthcare
3. Non-Transferable
Biometric data is tied to the individual, ensuring nonrepudiation. This makes it ideal for
accountability in workplaces or fraud detection, as users cannot deny their actions.
4. Scalability and Efficiency
Biometric systems can scale to manage large user bases with minimal administrative
overhead, reducing costs for password resets (e.g., Auth0 reports up to $120 per reset).
Templates also require less storage than traditional credentials.
5. Difficult to Spoof
advanced systems with liveness detection prevent attacks using fake representations, like
photos or silicone fingerprints. Multimodal biometrics (combining traits like face and iris)
further enhance security

Disadvantages of Biometrics

1. Privacy Concerns
Biometric data is inherently personal and immutable. If compromised, it cannot be
changed like a password. Breaches, such as the 2019 Suprema incident exposing
fingerprints of over a million people, highlight risks of misuse or unauthorized sharing.
2. High Implementation Costs
Setting up biometric systems, especially for small businesses, can be expensive due to
hardware, software, and integration costs. Maintenance and updates add to the expense.
3. False Positives/Negatives
Systems may mistakenly grant access to unauthorized users (false positives) or deny
legitimate ones (false negatives). Factors like poor lighting, aging, or injuries (e.g., a
burned finger) can affect accuracy
4. Data Breach Risks
Biometric databases are attractive targets for hackers. Unlike passwords, stolen biometric
data (e.g., fingerprints from the 2015 U.S. Office of Personnel Management breach)
cannot be replaced, posing long-term risks.

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 CONCLUSION

Biometric Encryption System is an algorithm for the linking and retrieval of digital keys, which
can be used as a method for the secure management of cryptographic keys. The cryptographic
key is generated independently from the Biometric Encryption algorithm and can be updated
periodically via a re-enrollment procedure. The convenience and security provided by Biometric
Encryption will undoubtedly help to promote more widespread use of cryptographic systems. As
biometric technology matures, there will be an increasing interaction among the market,
technology, and the applications. This interaction will be influenced by the added value of the
technology, user acceptance, and the credibility of the service provider. It is too early to predict
where and how biometric technology would evolve and get embedded in which applications. But
it is certain that biometric-based recognition will have a profound influence on the way we
conduct our daily business

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REFERENCES

1. Albert Bodo, “Method for producing a digital signature with aid of a biometric feature”,
German patent DE 42 43 908 A1, (1994).
2. J.W. Goodman, Introduction to Fourier Optics, McGraw-Hill, (1968).
3. W.B. Hahn, Jr., and K.A. Bauchert, “Optical correlation algorithm development for the
Transfer of Optical Processing to Systems (TOPS) program”, Proc. SPIE 1959, 48-54,
(1993).
4. Manfred Bromba(www.bromba.com)
5. P.J. Philips, P. Grother, R. J. Micheals, D. M. Blackburn, E. Tabassi, and J. M. Bone,
“FRVT 2002: Overview and Summary”, available from
http://www.frvt.org/FRVT2002/documents.htm

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