WASHINGTON  Bionics Co., Ltd. has developed a  biometrics blood vessel authentication system using the human finger, a  demonstration team with the principle inventors and system developers will be in Washington Dc to give a demonstration of the system will be given and an opportunity to ask and answer any questions.  Its uses are multiple in the identification of individuals, access control etc and hence perhaps a valuable addition to Law Enforcement, DOD, federal agencies, IMF, FBI, TSA, FAA, Correctional Facilities etc

The Bionics Co., Ltd. was established on January 29, 2001. Bionics Co. has developed the biometrics authentication technology, a blood vessel authentication system, which is currently the most reliable and secure in the field of security technology. The biometrics technology market is one of the new markets in the 21st century. The applications of the biometrics market have tremendous potential in the security, IT and medical fields. Not only has Bionics Co. increased its market share, but is also one of the leading companies in this field. Bionics Co. is committed to improve the ability for businesses to offer safer and more secure working environments, improving the quality of life for everyone.

Bionics Co. Ltd, a US Japanese company is the inventor and patent holder for Blood Vessel Authentication and currently the only one to have developed this Blood Vessel Authentication System.  It is currently in use and operating successfully as part of security systems at power plants, and other commercial/industrial sites.  The system provides 100% ID with no method for circumventing or fooling the system

Using near-infrared light, we can obtain transillumination image of blood vessels of a hand or a finger. This image can be used for personal identification. Recently, a practical system has been developed based on this method. This system is relatively simple and the identification time is reasonably short. In order to examine the effectiveness of the personal identification using the transillumination image of blood vessels, the fundamental characteristics of the developed system were analyzed.

The dependence of the rejection and acceptance errors on the correlation threshold was clarified. It was also found that there is over 10% clearance of correlation threshold between the minimum threshold of a sufficiently low acceptance-error and the maximum threshold of a sufficiently low rejection-error. Therefore, we can expect practically negligible rejection and acceptance errors by setting the correlation threshold between these two values. We can also control the errors by choosing an appropriate correlation thresh-old.

The importance of the security in various systems has been rapidly increasing. The personal identification is one of the key technologies to support the security in computer systems, in access-controlled areas, etc. The term “biometrics” has been used to refer the field of statistical or mathematical data analysis in the biological sciences. In these days, the term has also been used to refer the technology devoted to the individual identification using biological traits. The techniques using finger prints, iris scanning, retinal scanning and facial recognition are well known. We have pointed out the feasibility and the usefulness of the technique to use the transillumination image of a hand for the biometrics [Shimizu, 1992]. Using near-infrared light (700-1200 nm wavelength) we can obtain transillumination image of blood vessels of a hand or a finger.

The image is useful for noninvasive imaging of physiological function, as well [Shimizu, 1996], [Taka, 2000]. The pattern of blood vessels is individual-specific and does not change in aging. The pattern is hardly interfered by the dirt and scars on the surface and is not easy to imitate. The simplicity of the hardware and the speed of recognition are the great advantages of this technique over other existing methods. Recently, a practical system has been developed and used in various fields. To examine the effectiveness of the proposed method, we have analyzed the identification rate in personal identification using the developed system.

Different patterns are observed with different individuals. Figure 2 illustrates the principle of the imaging part of the developed personal identification system. A finger is illuminated with near-infrared light (950 nm wavelength) from an array of LED’s, and the transillumination image is obtained by a CCD camera through an optical filter. After image processing, the pat-tern of the blood vessels is stored in digital codes. First, the patterns of the persons to be registered are stored in the memory region of a computer system. When a subject inserts his finger in the imaging part, a transillumination image is obtained, processed and compared with the stored images, automatically. According to the result of the comparison, the next action is activated such as opening a door, starting a computer, etc. Since the comparison is based on a correlation operation, the processing time is reasonably short (typically a few seconds).

The effectiveness of this method is largely dependent on the fact that no one has a common pattern of blood vessels in a finger. We need to examine the reasonability of this hypothesis within a limit of spatial resolution of a practical system. For the analysis, 300 transillumination images were used. The images of six different fingers (index, middle, ring fingers in both hands) were obtained in each of 50 subjects. The subjects were 42 males (average age of 36.7)and 8 females (average age of 27.5). All the combinations (90000 cases) were tested and the identification rates were analyzed. Two parameters were used in the analysis. One is the rejection-error rate, or the rate to accept the other person who has to be rejected. Another is the acceptance-error rate, or the rate to reject the person himself who has to be accepted. As the threshold increases, the rejection-error rate decreases and the acceptance-error rate increases. In this figure, we can see the degree of the dependence of each error on the threshold. In practice we have to make a compromise between these two errors. It should be noted that generally there is over 10% clearance of correlation threshold between the minimum threshold of a sufficiently low acceptance-error and the maximum threshold of a sufficiently low rejection-error. Therefore, we can expect practically negligible rejection and acceptance errors by setting the correlation threshold between these two values. In some applications, rejection error is more serious than the acceptance error. In such a case, the correlation threshold should be chosen as a higher value, or closer to 1. In this way, we can control the errors by an appropriate choice of the threshold values according to the requirements of a specific application.

Bionics has proposed a technique for the personal identification using a transillumination image of a hand or a finger. A practical system has been developed and the feasibility has been verified. This system is relatively simple and the identification time is reasonably short. In order to examine the effectiveness of the personal identification using the transillumination image of blood vessels, the fundamental characteristics of the developed system were analyzed. The dependence of the rejection and acceptance errors on the correlation threshold was clarified. Based on the results of this analysis, we can expect reasonably low error rate for practical use. We can also control the errors by choosing appropriate correlation thresholds. With further improvements in the techniques of transillumination imaging, image processing and the correlation operation, higher performance of this method is expected in the near future.

References

Shimizu K. Optical trans-body imaging - Feasibility of optical CT and functional imaging of living body, Medicina Philosophica, 11:620-629. 1992.

Shimizu K, Yamamoto K. Imaging of physiological functions by laser transillumination, OSA TOPS on Advances Optical Imaging and Photom Migration, 2:348-352, 1996.

Taka Y, Kato Y, Shimizu K. Transillumination imaging of physiological functions by NIR light, World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, (CD-ROM) 4982-14105, 2000.

For more information please visit the website at http://www.bionics-k.co.jp