Joint x-ray a possible foolproof biometric mode
26 March, 2009
category: Biometrics
Lior Shamir, an official from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and Salim Rahimi, a computer engineer from State University of New York, have proposed using x-rays of knees as a fool-proof method for identifying an individual’s identity, according to a UK Register article.
The added benefits of switching from a regularly used system such as fingerprint recognition or iris recognition are that it would be much tougher for a fraudster to use an artificial object to fool the system. Additionally, creating such a system would be very simple as it would be able to run off of the publicly available wnd-charm algorithm that is used for determining medical issues in knee joints.
According to the Shamir and Rahimi’s results from their tests, the use of knee bones for authentication is not as reliable as existing biometric modes. However, they are confident that refining the algorithm could yield much better results. Furthermore, they are looking into alternatives such as terahertz to keep cancer-causing x-rays from being a danger to frequent flyers.
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