Biometrics Using 3D Vision Techniques.

Scientist claim that sometimes just twenty seconds are enough to recognize a person. However, such human ability to recognize for certain another person is quite limited to people who are closer or that have been known or hanged around with. On the contrary, an automatic identification system may require a longer time for recognition, but is able to recognize people in a larger set of potential identities. Nowadays, the most popular biometric identification system is certainly represented by fingerprints. However, present biometric techniques are numerous and include for example those exploiting hand shape, iris scanning, face and ear features extraction, handwriting recognition, and voice recognition. Early biometric systems were implemented by exploiting one-dimensional features such as voice sound, as well as two-dimensional ones such as images from fingerprints or face. With technology advances and costs decrease, better and better devices and capture techniques have become available. These have been investigated and adopted in biometric settings too. Image vision techniques have not been excluded from this evolution-supported acceleration. The increase of computational resources has supported the development of stereo vision and multi-view reconstruction. Afterwards, 3D capture devices have been introduced, such as laser or structured light scanners, as well as ultrasound-based systems. The third dimension has therefore represented a significant advancement for the implementation of more and more accurate and efficient recognition systems. However, it also presents new challenges and new limits not yet overcome, which are the main motivation for the research in this context.