{"id":3900,"date":"2015-02-08T23:05:07","date_gmt":"2015-02-09T04:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.m2sys.com\/blog\/?p=3900"},"modified":"2022-06-21T01:08:44","modified_gmt":"2022-06-21T05:08:44","slug":"the-advantages-of-multimodal-biometric-system-for-human-identification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.m2sys.com\/blog\/biometric-resources\/the-advantages-of-multimodal-biometric-system-for-human-identification\/","title":{"rendered":"The Advantages of Multimodal Biometric Systems for Human Identification"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the technology world evolves, challenges to implement secure personal identification protocols with biometric technology are increasing and the need for accurate human identification is higher than ever in just about every market across the world. \u00a0Parallel evolution of the biometric identification management market has identified that use of a single hardware modality for identification purposes may no longer be the most intelligent choice for many industries. Single modality biometric systems have to contend with a variety of problems such as noisy data, intra class variations, non-universality, spoof attacks, and distinctiveness. Some of these limitations can be addressed by deploying multimodal biometric systems<\/strong><\/a> that integrate multiple biometric modalities in a single scan to alleviate the challenges of a uni modal system.<\/p>\n

What is multi-modal biometric technology?<\/h2>\n

Multi-modal biometrics\u00a0are systems that are capable of using more than one physiological or behavioral characteristic for enrollment, verification, and identification. Human identification based on multi-modal biometrics is becoming an emerging trend, and one of the most important reasons to combine different modalities is to improve recognition accuracy. There are additional reasons to combine two or more biometrics such as the fact that different biometric modalities might be more appropriate for unique deployment scenarios or when security is of vital importance to protect sensitive data.<\/p>\n

How does a multi-modal biometric system work?<\/h2>\n

Multi-modal biometric systems take input from single or multiple biometric devices for measurement of two or more different biometric characteristics.\u00a0 For example, a multi-modal system combining fingerprint and finger vein characteristics for biometric recognition would be considered a \u201cmulti-modal\u201d system regardless of whether fingerprint and finger vein images were captured by different or the same biometric devices. It is not a requirement that the various measures be mathematically combined in any way because biometric traits remains independent from each other, which results in higher accuracy when identifying a person.<\/p>\n

Why do we need multi-modal biometric systems for human identification?<\/h2>\n

Every biometric system identifies a person by who the person is rather than what the person carries, unlike most traditional authorization systems such as personal identification numbers (PINs), passwords, or ID cards. Unlike these solutions that rely on \u201cwhat you have,\u201d biometric credentials cannot be lost, forgotten, guessed, or easily cloned. Despite these advantages, the technology has some limitations too:<\/p>\n

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  1. Environment: <\/strong>The environment in which biometric data is captured may have an effect on the ability of the system to identify an individual. For example, the accuracy of facial recognition is affected by illumination, pose, and facial expression.<\/li>\n
  2. Noise in sensed data:<\/strong> A fingerprint with a scar and voice altered by a cold are examples of noisy inputs. Noisy data could also result from defective or improperly maintained sensors.<\/li>\n
  3. Intra-class variations:<\/strong> Fingerprint data acquired from an individual during authentication may be very different from data used to generate the template during enrollment due to a misplacement of the finger on a capture device, thereby affecting the matching process.<\/li>\n
  4. Non-universality: <\/strong>Some people cannot physically provide a standalone biometric credential due to illness or disabilities.<\/li>\n
  5. Spoof attacks:<\/strong> An impostor may attempt to spoof the biometric trait of a legitimately enrolled user in order to circumvent the system.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n