Efficient search and retrieval in biometric databases

Biometric identification has emerged as a reliable means of controlling access to both physical and virtual spaces. Fingerprints, face and voice biometrics are being increasingly used as alternatives to passwords, PINs and visual verification. In spite of the rapid proliferation of large-scale databases, the research has thus far been focused only on accuracy within small databases. In larger applications, response time and retrieval efficiency also become important in addition to accuracy. Unlike structured information such as text or numeric data that can be sorted, biometric data does not have any natural sorting order. Therefore indexing and binning of biometric databases represents a challenging problem. We present results using parallel combination of multiple biometrics to bin the database. Using hand geometry and signature features we show that the search space can be reduced to just 5% of the entire database.