BIOMETRIC MATCHING ENGINE

• US 20130086090A1
• Filed: 10/03/2012
• Published: 04/04/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 10/03/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Accenture Global Services Limited (Accenture PLC)
• Original Assignee: Accenture Global Services Limited (Accenture PLC)
• Inventors: Astrom, Per Anders Matteus, Partington, Alastair Ross, Bataller, Cyrille
• Granted Patent: US 8,832,124 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/754
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/00 Information retrieval; Database structures therefor; File system structures therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2455 Query execution
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/5838 using colour
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/5866 using information manually generated, e.g. tags, keywords, comments, manually generated location and time information
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/31 User authentication
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/32 using biometric data, e.g. fingerprints, iris scans or voiceprints
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/42 using separate channels for security data
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/94 Hardware or software architectures specially adapted for image or video understanding
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/10 Human or animal bodies, e.g. vehicle occupants or pedestrians; Body parts, e.g. hands
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/1347 Preprocessing; Feature extraction
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/1365 Matching; Classification
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/1382 Detecting the live character of the finger, i.e. distinguishing from a fake or cadaver finger
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/70 Multimodal biometrics, e.g. combining information from different biometric modalities

Abstract

The present disclosure concerns a method of identifying a biometric record of an individual in a database (108), the database comprising at least first and second sets of records, each set comprising at least one record, the method comprising: receiving by a processing device (102) at least first and second input biometric samples of said individual; performing on the records of said first set a first matching process comprising a first filtering operation followed by a second filtering operation, and performing on the records of said second set a second matching process comprising said second filtering operation followed by said first filtering operation, wherein said first filtering operation comprises comparing said first input biometric sample to a first reference biometric sample of each record, and said second filtering operation comprises comparing said second input biometric sample to a second reference biometric sample of each record; and identifying a biometric record of said individual based on results of the first and second matching processes.

Claims

1. A method of identifying a biometric record of an individual in a database (108), the database comprising at least first and second sets of records, each set comprising at least one record, the method comprising:

receiving by a processing device (102) at least first and second input biometric samples of said individual;

performing on the records of said first set a first matching process comprising a first filtering operation followed by a second filtering operation, and performing on the records of said second set a second matching process comprising said second filtering operation followed by said first filtering operation, wherein said first filtering operation comprises comparing said first input biometric sample to a first reference biometric sample of each record, and said second filtering operation comprises comparing said second input biometric sample to a second reference biometric sample of each record; and

identifying a biometric record of said individual based on results of the first and second matching processes.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said first input biometric sample and said first reference biometric sample of each record are of a first type and said second input biometric sample and said second reference biometric sample of each record are of a second type different to said first type.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein said first type and said second type are each either:

a photo of the face of the individual;

or

a fingerprint of the individual;

or

an iris scan of the individual;

or

an image of a signature of the individual;

or

a finger vein or palm vein image of the individual;

or

a voice sample of the individual.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein said first and second filtering operations each comprise eliminating one or more records based on the corresponding comparison.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising, prior to performing said first and second matching processes, partitioning said database into a first partition comprising said first set of records and a second partition comprising said second set of records by comparing a parameter relating to at least one reference biometric sample of each record of said database with at least one threshold.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein said partitioning is further based on a parameter relating to either or both of said first and second input biometric samples.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein said parameter is a quality measurement of said reference biometric sample of each record of said database.

8. The method of claim 5, wherein said partitioning is based on a quality measurement of at least one of the first and second input biometric samples and on a quality measurement of a reference biometric sample of each record.

9. The method of claim 7, further comprising determining said quality measurement based on either:

the age of the individual of the biometric sample;

or

the gender of the individual of the biometric sample;

or

the size of an image of the biometric sample;

the sharpness of an image of the biometric sample;

or

the viewing angle of an image of the biometric sample;

or

the contrast in an image of the biometric sample;

or

any combination of the above.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein said first matching process comprises at least one filtering threshold determined based on metadata extracted from at least one record of said first set, and said second matching process comprises at least one filtering threshold determined based on metadata extracted from at least one record of said second set.

11. A computer readable medium storing a computer program that, when executed by a processor, causes the method of claim 1 to be implemented.

12. A biometric matching device comprising:

a database (108) comprising first and second sets of records, each set comprising at least one record; and

a processor (102) configured to;

perform on the records of said first set a first matching process comprising a first filtering operation followed by a second filtering operation, and perform on the records of said second set a second matching process comprising said second filtering operation followed by said first filtering operation, wherein said first filtering operation comprises comparing said first input biometric sample to a first reference biometric sample of each record, and said second filtering operation comprises comparing said second input biometric sample to a second reference biometric sample of each record; and

identify a biometric record of said individual based on results of the first and second matching processes.

13. The biometric matching device of claim 12, wherein said processing device is further configured to partition said database into a first partition comprising said first set of records and a second partition comprising said second set of records by comparing a parameter relating to at least one reference biometric sample of each record of said database with at least one threshold.

14. A biometric matching system comprising:

one or more biometric capturing devices (104, 106) for capturing at least one input biometric sample of an individual; and

the biometric matching device of claim 12 or 13.

15. A method of identifying a biometric record of an individual in a database (108) of biometric records, the method comprising:

in response to the reception by a processing device (108) of an input biometric sample of said individual, partitioning said database by said processing device into at least first and second partitions each comprising at least one of said biometric records, said partitioning comprising comparing a parameter relating to at least one reference biometric sample of each record of said database with at least one threshold value;

evaluating by said processing device according to a first matching process whether the input biometric sample matches a reference biometric sample from each record of said first partition;

evaluating by said processing device according to a second matching process whether the input biometric sample matches a reference biometric sample from each record of said second partition; and

identifying the biometric record of said individual based on results of the first and second matching processes.