Hitachi uses smartphone camera for finger vein authentication

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Hitachi Ltd developed a technology for finger vein authentication using a smartphone camera.

According to the company, it is the first practical finger vein authentication technology that uses a smartphone camera.

There were two major challenges in the development of a finger vein authentication technology using a smartphone camera. First, a vein pattern needs to be stably extracted from a reflection image using visible light. Second, it is necessary to accurately detect the positions of multiple fingers in front of the camera for high-accuracy authentication.

To solve the first challenge, Hitachi developed a method to extract a vein pattern by using color information. To deal with the second challenge, the company developed a technology to extract fingers from a background image and an advanced authentication technology that uses multiple fingers.

For the extraction of a finger vein pattern, Hitachi exploited the fact that a smartphone camera can take color pictures while the conventional infrared method can produce only monochrome images. For example, areas where there are veins are less reddish and more bluish than other areas. And finger winkles are more reddish and darker than the areas surrounding them.

For the authentication using multiple fingers, the colors and shapes of fingers are learned in advance, and the image of fingers is separated from the background image. Also, the postures of fingers are normalized so that authentication can be performed even when the angle of the hand slightly changes.

Furthermore, while only one finger is used for the infrared method, multiple fingers are used this time to improve authentication accuracy. For example, when two of the four fingers match the registered ones, the authentication is passed.

Hitachi tested the new technology in house and calculated its authentication accuracy. Specifically, the company verified that the technology correctly authenticates registered people and that it does not authenticate people that have not been registered. The company carried out the former test about 1,000 times and the latter test about 15,000 times, but no error occurred.

“We became confident that we can perform high-accuracy authentication,” Hitachi said.

This time, Hitachi did not clarify when to commercialize the new technology, but it said, “We will go forward with the evaluation of the new technology and so forth so that we can commercialize it in one or two years.”

For the evaluation results announced this time, Hitachi used VGA images taken by an 8-Mpixel camera. Though the technology was realized with Android, the company plans to support iOS at the time of commercialization.

Also, this time, Hitachi transferred images taken by a smartphone camera to a tablet computer that carries out authentication, which took one second. But the company intends to use a smartphone or a cloud server for authentication at the time of commercialization.

According to Hitachi, smartphone-based personal authentication is also advantageous in terms of cost.

“Currently, one-time passwords are often used for personal authentication at the time of monetary transactions,” the company said. “But the technology we developed this time can reduce costs more.”