Personal authentication device

• US 20080049981A1
• Filed: 10/17/2007
• Published: 02/28/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 03/04/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hitachi Astemo Ltd. (Hitachi, Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Hitachi Automotive Systems Limited (Hitachi, Ltd.)
• Inventors: Miyatake, Takafumi, Miura, Naoto, Nagasaka, Akio, Kashimura, Yuichi
• Granted Patent: US 8,208,691 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/115
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 18/00 Pattern recognition
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/14 Vascular patterns
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/145 Sensors therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G07C 9/37 using biometric data, e.g. fingerprints, iris scans or voice recognition

Abstract

A compact authentication device that prevents user from feeling pressure and is strong against external light, when capturing an image of a finger blood vessel pattern with transmitted light. The device includes a guidance part for determining the finger position, a light source disposed on at least one side of the guidance part to emit light to be transmitted though the finger, an image capture part for capturing the transmitted light, a shading unit for limiting an irradiation region of the light, a finger thickness measuring unit, a unit for controlling a light amount of the light source based on a result of the measurement, a unit for recording registered image patterns of the finger, a unit for collating a captured image pattern from the image capture part with the registered patterns, and a unit for controlling different processing according to the collation result.

Claims

1-19. -19. (canceled)

20. A personal identification apparatus comprising:

a light source for irradiating a light to a hand,

an imaging unit for creating image of transmitted light from the hand,

a processing unit for extracting a vein pattern from the image and comparing the vein pattern with a registered pattern,

wherein at least one of an angle and a power supply of the light source is controlled based on a thickness of the hand.

21. The personal authentication apparatus according to claim 20, wherein said processing unit controls the light so as to minimize a saturated region by monitoring the image of the imaging unit.

22. The personal authentication apparatus according to claim 21, wherein extracting the saturated region as a region in which pixels having the maximum brightness value are consecutive beginning from an outline of the hand.

23. The personal authentication apparatus according to claim 20, further comprising a mechanism for housing the light source into the apparatus chassis except at the time of authentication.