Hand-Geometry Recognition Based on Contour Parameters

This paper demonstrates the feasibility of a new method of hand-geometry recognition based on parameters derived from the contour of the hand. The contour is completely determined by the black-and-white image of the hand and can be derived from it by means of simple image-processing techniques. It can be modelled by parameters, or features, that can capture more details of the shape of the hand than what is possible with the standard geometrical features used in hand-geometry recognition. The set of features considered in this paper consists of the spatial coordinates of certain landmarks on the contour. The feature set and the recognition method used are discussed in detail. The usefulness of the proposed feature set is evaluated experimentally in a verification context. The verification performance obtained with contour-based features is compared with the verification performance of other methods described in the literature.