Online Signature Verification commonly relies on function-based features, such as time-sampled horizontal and vertical coordinates, as well as the pressure exerted by the writer, obtained through a digitizer. Although inferring additional information about the writer’s arm pose, kinematics, and dynamics based on digitizer data can be useful, it constitutes a challenge. In this paper, we tackle this challenge by proposing a new set of features based on the dynamics of online signatures. These new features are inferred through a Lagrangian formulation, obtaining the sequences of generalized coordinates and torques for 2D and 3D robotic arm models. By combining kinematic and dynamic robotic features, our results demonstrate their significant effectiveness for online automatic signature verification and achieving state-of-the-art results when integrated into deep learning models. • Proposed new signature verification features based on Lagrangian dynamics. • Generalized coordinates and torques modelled 2D and 3D robotic arms. • Achieving state-of-the-art results in online signature verification. • Lagrangian formulation shows potential for advancing ASV systems.

Handwriting, as a uniquely human skill, contributes to fine motor development and cognitive growth. Beyond mere functionality, handwriting carries individuality and subtle emotional nuances, evoking feelings of intimacy and authenticity. Consequently, the generation of synthetic handwritten manuscripts should not only prioritize the production of legible text, but also seek to enhance personalization and authenticity in digital communication. This enhancement renders handwriting synthesis invaluable in domains such as digital marketing and e-learning. Notably, handwriting synthesis plays a pivotal role in forensic science, particularly in signature verification, to bolster security and prevent fraud. Additionally, it has the potential to enhance accessibility, particularly for individuals with disabilities, and assist in health monitoring among elderly populations. Motivated by the significance of handwriting synthesis, this paper conducts a comprehensive literature review on the synthetic generation of handwriting and signatures. By examining research from 2019 to 2024, we categorize methods of synthesis, evaluate synthetic handwriting quality, and explore practical applications. Furthermore, we provide insights into publicly available code resources and emerging synthetic databases.

Online signature parameters, which are based on human characteristics, broaden the applicability of an automatic signature verifier. Although kinematic and dynamic features have previously been suggested, accurately measuring features such as arm and forearm torques remains challenging. We present two approaches for estimating angular velocities, angular positions, and force torques. The first approach involves using a physical UR5e robotic arm to reproduce a signature while capturing those parameters over time. The second method, a cost-effective approach, uses a neural network to estimate the same parameters. Our findings demonstrate that a simple neural network model can extract effective parameters for signature verification. Training the neural network with the MCYT300 dataset and cross-validating with other databases, namely, BiosecurID, Visual, Blind, OnOffSigDevanagari-75 and OnOffSigBengali-75 confirm the model’s generalization capability. The trained model is available at: https://github.com/gvessio/SignatureKinematics . • We explore kinematic and dynamic features for online signature verification. • A UR5 robotic arm is used to acquire these features from the MCYT330 dataset. • A neural network estimates the kinematic and dynamic features of a signature. • We demonstrate promising performance using the estimated features across datasets.

Handwriting movements can be leveraged as a unique form of behavioral biometrics, to verify whether a real user is operating a device or application. This task can be framed as a “reverse Turing test” in which a computer has to detect if an input instance has been generated by a human or artificially. To tackle this task, we study ten public datasets of handwritten symbols (isolated characters, digits, gestures, pointing traces, and signatures) that are artificially reproduced using seven different synthesizers, including, among others, the Kinematic Theory (ΣΛ model), generative adversarial networks, Transformers, and Diffusion models. We train a shallow recurrent neural network that achieves excellent performance (98.3% Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC) score and 1.4% equal error rate on average across all synthesizers and datasets) using nonfeaturized trajectory data as input. In few-shot settings, we show that our classifier achieves such an excellent performance when trained on just 10% of the data, as evaluated on the remaining 90% of the data as a test set. We further challenge our classifier in out-of-domain settings, and observe very competitive results as well. Our work has implications for computerized systems that need to verify human presence, and adds an additional layer of security to keep attackers at bay.

Abstract Signature verification is a critical task in many applications, including forensic science, legal judgments, and financial markets. However, current signature verification systems are often difficult to explain, which can limit their acceptance in these applications. In this paper, we propose a novel explainable offline automatic signature verifier (ASV) to support forensic handwriting examiners. Our ASV is based on a universal background model (UBM) constructed from offline signature images. It allows us to assign a questioned signature to the UBM and to a reference set of known signatures using simple distance measures. This makes it possible to explain the verifier’s decision in a way that is understandable to non-experts. We evaluated our ASV on publicly available databases and found that it achieves competitive performance with state-of-the-art ASVs, even when challenging 1 versus 1 comparisons are considered. Our results demonstrate that it is possible to develop an explainable ASV that is also competitive in terms of performance. We believe that our ASV has the potential to improve the acceptance of signature verification in critical applications such as forensic science and legal judgments.

Signature synthesis is a computation technique that generates artificial specimens which can support decision making in automatic signature verification. A lot of work has been dedicated to this subject, which centres on synthesizing dynamic and static two-dimensional handwriting on canvas. This paper proposes a framework to generate synthetic 3D on-air signatures exploiting the lognormality principle, which mimics the complex neuromotor control processes at play as the fingertip moves. Addressing the usual cases involving the development of artificial individuals and duplicated samples, this paper contributes to the synthesis of: (1) the trajectory and velocity of entirely 3D new signatures; (2) kinematic information when only the 3D trajectory of the signature is known, and (3) duplicate samples of 3D real signatures. Validation was conducted by generating synthetic 3D signature databases mimicking real ones and showing that automatic signature verifications of genuine and skilled forgeries report performances similar to those of real and synthetic databases. We also observed that training 3D automatic signature verifiers with duplicates can reduce errors. We further demonstrated that our proposal is also valid for synthesizing 3D air writing and gestures. Finally, a perception test confirmed the human likeness of the generated specimens. The databases generated are publicly available, only for research purposes, at .

The Kinematic Theory of rapid movements, and its associated Sigma-Lognormal, model 2D spatiotemporal trajectories. It is constructed mainly as a temporal overlap of curves between virtual target points. Specifically, it uses an arc and a lognormal as primitives for the representation of the trajectory and velocity, respectively. This paper proposes developing this model, in what we call the Kinematic Theory Transform, which establishes a mathematical framework that allows further primitives to be used. Mainly, we evaluate Euler curves to link virtual target points and Gaussian, Beta, Gamma, Double-bounded lognormal, and Generalized Extreme Value functions to model the bell-shaped velocity profile. Using these primitives, we report reconstruction results with spatiotemporal trajectories executed by human beings, animals, and anthropomorphic robots.

This paper proposes a method to generate the synthetic kinematic of signatures in 3D. The analysis of 3D signatures is becoming a hot topic due to the irruption of commercial off-the-shelf devices for easy acquisition of 3D movements. However, the novelty of this technology reveals the scarce publicly available signatures in 3D, which hinder their de-velopment. A solution is the synthesis of Signatures in 3D. As a first step, this paper synthesizes the kinematics of 3D signatures based on the Kinematic Theory of Rapid Movements and its associated Sigma-Lognormal model in 3D. To evaluate the method, we regenerate signature databases with synthetic speed profiles in all genuine and forgeries found in two 3D signature databases. Then, we analyze the similarities in the performance of a signature verifier when real and synthetic signatures are used in random and skilled forgeries experiments.

This article presents SVC-onGoing1, an on-going competition for on-line signature verification where researchers can easily benchmark their systems against the state of the art in an open common platform using large-scale public databases, such as DeepSignDB2 and SVC2021_EvalDB3, and standard experimental protocols. SVC-onGoing is based on the ICDAR 2021 Competition on On-Line Signature Verification (SVC 2021), which has been extended to allow participants anytime. The goal of SVC-onGoing is to evaluate the limits of on-line signature verification systems on popular scenarios (office/mobile) and writing inputs (stylus/finger) through large-scale public databases. Three different tasks are considered in the competition, simulating realistic scenarios as both random and skilled forgeries are simultaneously considered on each task. The results obtained in SVC-onGoing prove the high potential of deep learning methods in comparison with traditional methods. In particular, the best signature verification system has obtained Equal Error Rate (EER) values of 3.33% (Task 1), 7.41% (Task 2), and 6.04% (Task 3). Future studies in the field should be oriented to improve the performance of signature verification systems on the challenging mobile scenarios of SVC-onGoing in which several mobile devices and the finger are used during the signature acquisition.

Online fraud often involves identity theft. Since most security measures are weak or can be spoofed, we investigate a more nuanced and less explored avenue: behavioral biometrics via handwriting movements. This kind of data can be used to verify whether a user is operating a device or a computer application, so it is important to distinguish between human and machine-generated movements reliably. For this purpose, we study handwritten symbols (isolated characters, digits, gestures, and signatures) produced by humans and machines, and compare and contrast several deep learning models. We find that if symbols are presented as static images, they can fool state-of-the-art classifiers (near 75% accuracy in the best case) but can be distinguished with remarkable accuracy if they are presented as temporal sequences (95% accuracy in the average case). We conclude that an accurate detection of fake movements has more to do with how users write, rather than what they write. Our work has implications for computerized systems that need to authenticate or verify legitimate human users, and provides an additional layer of security to keep attackers at bay.

The objective of this paper is to present the state of-the-art relating to automatic speech and voice analysis techniques as applied to the monitoring of patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease as well as to shed light on possible future research topics. This work reviews more than 90 papers in the existing literature and focuses on the main feature extraction techniques and classification methods used. In order to guide researchers interested in working in this area, the most frequently used data repositories are also given. Likewise, it identifies the most clinically relevant results and the current lines developed in the field. Automatic speech analysis, within the Health 4.0 framework, offers the possibility of assessing these patients, without the need for a specific infrastructure, by means of non-invasive, fast and inexpensive techniques as a complement to the current diagnostic methods.

The Kinematic Theory of rapid movements and its associated Sigma-Lognormal model have been extensively used in a large variety of applications. While the physical and biological meaning of the model have been widely tested and validated for rapid movements, some shortcomings have been detected when it is used with continuous long and complex movements. To alleviate such drawbacks, and inspired by the motor equivalence theory and a conceivable visual feedback, this paper proposes a novel framework to extract the Sigma-Lognormal parameters, namely iDeLog. Specifically, iDeLog consists of two steps. The first one, influenced by the motor equivalence model, separately derives an initial action plan defined by a set of virtual points and angles from the trajectory and a sequence of lognormals from the velocity. In the second step, based on a hypothetical visual feedback compatible with an open-loop motor control, the virtual target points of the action plan are iteratively moved to improve the matching between the observed and reconstructed trajectory and velocity. During experiments conducted with handwritten signatures, iDeLog obtained promising results as compared to the previous development of the Sigma-Lognormal.

In automatic signature verification, questioned specimens are usually compared with reference signatures. In writer-dependent schemes, a number of reference signatures are required to build up the individual signer model while a writer-independent system requires a set of reference signatures from several signers to develop the model of the system. This paper addresses the problem of automatic signature verification when no reference signatures are available. The scenario we explore consists of a set of signatures, which could be signed by the same author or by multiple signers. As such, we discuss three methods which estimate automatically the common authorship of a set of off-line signatures. The first method develops a score similarity matrix, worked out with the assistance of duplicated signatures; the second uses a feature-distance matrix for each pair of signatures; and the last method introduces pre-classification based on the complexity of each signature. Publicly available signatures were used in the experiments, which gave encouraging results. As a baseline for the performance obtained by our approaches, we carried out a visual Turing Test where forensic and non-forensic human volunteers, carrying out the same task, performed less well than the automatic schemes.

On-line signature verification involves the use of many different features or domains. The most stable domains for a signer are analysed in this paper. For this purpose, stable domains are calculated with the weighted Direct Matching Points (ωDMP), which is a relaxed version of the classical DMP technique. In addition to the direct coupling, ωDMP also considers the information contained in the 1:N couplings from the Dynamic Time Warping algorithm. Using the ωDMP technique, state-of-the-art verification results are obtained, showing the capacity to outperform previous DMP techniques to calculate the local stability model of signers.

Many features have been proposed in on-line signature verification. Generally, these features rely on the position of the on-line signature samples and their dynamic properties, as recorded by a tablet. This paper proposes a novel feature space to describe efficiently on-line signatures. Since producing a signature requires a skeletal arm system and its associated muscles, the new feature space is based on characterizing the movement of the shoulder, the elbow and the wrist joints when signing. As this motion is not directly obtained from a digital tablet, the new features are calculated by means of a virtual skeletal arm (VSA) model, which simulates the architecture of a real arm and forearm. Specifically, the VSA motion is described by its 3D joint position and its joint angles. These anthropomorphic features are worked out from both pen position and orientation through the VSA forward and direct kinematic model. The anthropomorphic features' robustness is proved by achieving state-of-the-art performance with several verifiers and multiple benchmarks on third party signature databases, which were collected with different devices and in different languages and scripts.

Tracing complex and long handwritten signatures takes an important role in signature verification. Indeed, whether a dynamic signature could be inferred from its static counterpart, improvements would be expected during the automatic verification. An important factor in recovering the tracing of a thinned signature is the feasible and accurate processing of the clusters. A cluster is produced when two or more pieces of handwriting intertwine. Specifically, the challenge is to find which input branch is associated to which output branch and the path between them inside the cluster. In this paper, a novel proposal, based on good continuity criteria derived from both visual perception and movement execution, is developed to solve the paths within the clusters. To this aim, our implementation focuses on a multiscale analysis of the thinned traces and the Dijkstra's algorithm for an effective branch association. Experiments have been carried out with SigComp2009 and SUSIG-Visual signature databases, which are two publicly available Western-based corpus. Promising results have been obtained in our evaluation when studying the success rate in the branches association. The results confirm that processing clusters is important to detect components and a correct cluster branch association improves the writing order recovery performance. Finally, encouraging results have been obtained when performing a global estimation of the writing order in handwriting signatures, in terms of Root Mean Square Error and Dynamic Time Warping.

This paper proposes a novel set of function-based features for dynamic signature verification. They are inspired on the human stance and the variations in the angles of the arm joints when signing. Specifically, we propose to convert the trajectory and pen-tip altitude and azimuth from an on-line signature into the required sequence of an anthropomorphic robot poses to reproduce such signature. Then, these new robotic sequences are evaluated in an on-line automatic signature verifier. The robotic arm poses are defined by the angles of its joints. These values are worked out by means of the homogeneous transformation matrices between the different coordinate frames of each joint by using the Denavit-Hartenberg (DH) parameterization. The sequences of joint angles represent the new function-based feature space that we propose for signature verification. Our experimental results on the MCYT-100 corpus highlight the effectiveness of robotic-based features in signature verification. Moreover, competitive performances are achieved in random and skilled forgery experiments, compared to previous approaches.

The dynamic signature is a biometric trait widely used and accepted for verifying a person's identity. Current automatic signature-based biometric systems typically require five, ten, or even more specimens of a person's signature to learn intrapersonal variability sufficient to provide an accurate verification of the individual's identity. To mitigate this drawback, this paper proposes a procedure for training with only a single reference signature. Our strategy consists of duplicating the given signature a number of times and training an automatic signature verifier with each of the resulting signatures. The duplication scheme is based on a sigma lognormal decomposition of the reference signature. Two methods are presented to create human-like duplicated signatures: the first varies the strokes' lognormal parameters (stroke-wise) whereas the second modifies their virtual target points (target-wise). A challenging benchmark, assessed with multiple state-of-the-art automatic signature verifiers and multiple databases, proves the robustness of the system. Experimental results suggest that our system, with a single reference signature, is capable of achieving a similar performance to standard verifiers trained with up to five signature specimens.

Developing an automatic signature verification system is challenging and demands a large number of training samples. This is why synthetic handwriting generation is an emerging topic in document image analysis. Some handwriting synthesizers use the motor equivalence model, the well-established hypothesis from neuroscience, which analyses how a human being accomplishes movement. Specifically, a motor equivalence model divides human actions into two steps: 1) the effector independent step at cognitive level and 2) the effector dependent step at motor level. In fact, recent work reports the successful application to Western scripts of a handwriting synthesizer, based on this theory. This paper aims to adapt this scheme for the generation of synthetic signatures in two Indic scripts, Bengali (Bangla), and Devanagari (Hindi). For this purpose, we use two different online and offline databases for both Bengali and Devanagari signatures. This paper reports an effective synthesizer for static and dynamic signatures written in Devanagari or Bengali scripts. We obtain promising results with artificially generated signatures in terms of appearance and performance when we compare the results with those for real signatures.

In this work, we propose a posterior probability-based decision-level fusion strategy for multimodal ocular biometric in the visible spectrum employing iris, sclera and peri-ocular trait. To best of our knowledge this is the first attempt to design a multimodal ocular biometrics using all three ocular traits. Employing all these traits in combination can help to increase the reliability and universality of the system. For instance in some scenarios, the sclera and iris can be highly occluded or for completely closed eyes scenario, the peri-ocular trait can be relied on for the decision. The proposed system is constituted of three independent traits and their combinations. The classification output of the trait which produces highest posterior probability is to consider as the final decision. An appreciable reliability and universal applicability of ocular trait are achieved in experiments conducted employing the proposed scheme.

This paper summarises the results of the Sclera Segmentation and Eye Recognition Benchmarking Competition (SSERBC 2017). It was organised in the context of the International Joint Conference on Biometrics (IJCB 2017). The aim of this competition was to record the recent developments in sclera segmentation and eye recognition in the visible spectrum (using iris, sclera and peri-ocular, and their fusion), and also to gain the attention of researchers on this subject. In this regard, we have used the Multi-Angle Sclera Dataset (MASD version 1). It is comprised of2624 images taken from both the eyes of 82 identities. Therefore, it consists of images of 164 (82×2) eyes. A manual segmentation mask of these images was created to baseline both tasks. Precision and recall based statistical measures were employed to evaluate the effectiveness of the segmentation and the ranks of the segmentation task. Recognition accuracy measure has been employed to measure the recognition task. Manually segmented sclera, iris and peri-ocular regions were used in the recognition task. Sixteen teams registered for the competition, and among them, six teams submitted their algorithms or systems for the segmentation task and two of them submitted their recognition algorithm or systems. The results produced by these algorithms or systems reflect current developments in the literature of sclera segmentation and eye recognition, employing cutting edge techniques. The MASD version 1 dataset with some of the ground truth will be freely available for research purposes. The success of the competition also demonstrates the recent interests of researchers from academia as well as industry on this subject.

This paper discusses the possibility of use of some challenging face images scenario captured from optical phenomenon in the wild for forensic purpose towards individual identification. Occluded and under cover face images in surveillance scenario can be collected from its reflection on a surrounding glass or on a smooth wall that is under the coverage of the surveillance camera and such scenario of face images can be linked for forensic purposes. Another similar scenario that can also be used for forensic is the face images of an individual standing behind a transparent glass wall. To investigate the capability of these images for personal identification this study is conducted. This work investigated different types of features employed in the literature to establish individual identification by such degraded face images. Among them, local region based featured worked best. To achieve higher accuracy and better facial features face image were cropped manually along its close bounding box and noise removal was performed (reflection, etc.). In order to experiment we have developed a database considering the above mentioned scenario, which will be publicly available for academic research. Initial investigation substantiates the possibility of using such face images for forensic purpose.

This article propose a complete framework to recover the dynamic properties (i.e. velocity and pressure) of an on-line Western signature from an image-based signature. The framework is based on classical approaches to recover the writing order of the strokes and a novel process to recover the kinematic properties from thinned trajectories. In order to evaluate the quality of the recovered signatures and the impact of each stage of our framework, the performance of a signature verification system on obtained signatures in each stage are compared to the performance with real signatures. As a proof of concepts, in this study we use the first 50 users of BiosecurID signature database since they contain both the on-line and off-line version of Western signatures.

Biometric researchers have historically seen signature duplication as a procedure relevant to improving the performance of automatic signature verifiers. Different approaches have been proposed to duplicate dynamic signatures based on the heuristic affine transformation, nonlinear distortion and the kinematic model of the motor system. The literature on static signature duplication is limited and as far as we know based on heuristic affine transforms and does not seem to consider the recent advances in human behavior modeling of neuroscience. This paper tries to fill this gap by proposing a cognitive inspired algorithm to duplicate off-line signatures. The algorithm is based on a set of nonlinear and linear transformations which simulate the human spatial cognitive map and motor system intra-personal variability during the signing process. The duplicator is evaluated by increasing artificially a training sequence and verifying that the performance of four state-of-the-art off-line signature classifiers using two publicly databases have been improved on average as if we had collected three more real signatures.

The synthetic generation of static handwritten signatures based on motor equivalence theory has been recently proposed for biometric applications. Motor equivalence divides the human handwriting action into an effector dependent cognitive level and an effector independent motor level. The first level has been suggested by others as an engram, generated through a spatial grid, and the second has been emulated with kinematic filters. Our paper proposes a development of this methodology in which we generate dynamic information and provide a unified comprehensive synthesizer for both static and dynamic signature synthesis. The dynamics are calculated by lognormal sampling of the 8-connected continuous signature trajectory, which includes, as a novelty, the pen-ups. The forgery generation imitates a signature by extracting the most perceptually relevant points of the given genuine signature and interpolating them. The capacity to synthesize both static and dynamic signatures using a unique model is evaluated according to its ability to adapt to the static and dynamic signature inter- and intra-personal variability. Our highly promising results suggest the possibility of using the synthesizer in different areas beyond the generation of unlimited databases for biometric training.

This work proposes a projective pairwise dictionary learning-based approach for fast and efficient multimodal eye biometrics. The work uses a faster Projective pairwise Discriminative Dictionary Learning (DL) in contrast to the traditional DL which uses synthesis DL. Projective Pairwise Discriminative Dictionary (PPDD) uses a synthesis dictionary and an analysis dictionary jointly to achieve the goal of pattern representation and discrimination. As the PPDD process of DL is in contrast to the use of l0or l1-norm sparsity constraints on the representation coefficients adopted in most traditional DL, it works faster than other DL. Moreover, the blending of synthesis dictionary and an analysis dictionary also enhance the feature representation of the complex eye patterns. We employed the combination of sclera and iris traits to establish multimodal biometrics. The experimental study and analysis conducted fulfill the hypothesis we considered. In this work we employed a part of the UBIRIS version 1 dataset to conduct the experiments.

Handwritten signature datasets are really necessary for the purpose of developing and training automatic signature verification systems. It is desired that all samples in a signature dataset should exhibit both inter-personal and intra-personal variability. A possibility to model this reality seems to be obtained through the synthesis of signatures. In this paper we propose a method based on motor equivalence model theory to generate static Bengali signatures. This theory divides the human action to write mainly into cognitive and motor levels. Due to difference between scripts, we have redesigned our previous synthesizer [1,2], which generates static Western signatures. The experiments assess whether this method can approach the intra and inter-personal variability of the Bengali-100 Static Signature DB from a performance-based validation. The similarities reported in the experimental results proof the ability of the synthesizer to generate signature images in this script.

As an emerging issue, multi-script signature verification is a recent challenge for current Automatic Signature Verification (ASV) systems. Relevant differences are presented in the morphology and lexicon of the signature images written in different scripts, such as used symbols, shape of the signatures, legibility, etc. These peculiarities could reduce the success of ASV systems, especially those which were originally designed for only one kind of script. However, one common feature among scripts in ASV is the fact that the greater the number of signatures that are used for training, the better the expected performance. In this work, we propose a method inspired by observations from the neuromotor equivalence theory to artificially enlarge the signature images used to train a state-of-the-art static signature classifier. Experimental results are obtained by using three static signature datasets derived from completely different scripts: Western, Bengali and Devanagari. Our results suggest that the cognitive-inspired model, which aims to duplicate static signatures, tends toward intra-class variability of signatures written in different scripts; the model's beneficial impact is seen in signature verification tests.

What can be done with only one enrolled real hand-written signature in Automatic Signature Verification (ASV)? Using 5 or 10 signatures for training is the most common case to evaluate ASV. In the scarcely addressed case of only one available signature for training, we propose to use modified duplicates. Our novel technique relies on a fully neuromuscular representation of the signatures based on the Kinematic Theory of rapid human movements and its Sigma-Lognormal model. This way, a real on-line signature is converted into the Sigma-Lognormal model domain. The model parameters are then varied to generate new duplicated signatures.

In the field of automatic signature verification, a major challenge for statistical analysis and pattern recognition is the small number of reference signatures per user. Score normalization, in particular, is challenged by the lack of information about intra-user variability. In this paper, we analyze several approaches to score normalization for dynamic time warping and propose a new two-stage normalization which detects simple forgeries in a first stage and copes with more skilled forgeries in a second stage. An experimental evaluation is conducted on two data sets with different characteristics, namely the MCYT online signature corpus, which contains over three hundred users, and the SUSIG visual sub-corpus, which contains highly skilled forgeries. The results demonstrate that score normalization is a key component for signature verification and that the proposed two-stage normalization achieves some of the best results on these difficult data sets both for random and for skilled forgeries.

In the networked society, in which a multitude of different devices can be used for signature acquisition, specific research is still needed to determine the extent to which features of an input signature depend on the characteristics of the signature acquisition process. In this paper an experimental investigation is carried out on constrained signatures, which were acquired using writing boxes with different areas and shapes. The paper discusses different behaviour of dynamic and static features with respect to the writing boxes.

In this paper we propose a new method for generating synthetic handwritten signature images for biometric applications. The procedures we introduce imitate the mechanism of motor equivalence which divides human handwriting into two steps: the working out of an effector independent action plan and its execution via the corresponding neuromuscular path. The action plan is represented as a trajectory on a spatial grid. This contains both the signature text and its flourish, if there is one. The neuromuscular path is simulated by applying a kinematic Kaiser filter to the trajectory plan. The length of the filter depends on the pen speed which is generated using a scalar version of the sigma lognormal model. An ink deposition model, applied pixel by pixel to the pen trajectory, provides realistic static signature images. The lexical and morphological properties of the synthesized signatures as well as the range of the synthesis parameters have been estimated from real databases of real signatures such as the MCYT Off-line and the GPDS960GraySignature corpuses. The performance experiments show that by tuning only four parameters it is possible to generate synthetic identities with different stability and forgers with different skills. Therefore it is possible to create datasets of synthetic signatures with a performance similar to databases of real signatures. Moreover, we can customize the created dataset to produce skilled forgeries or simple forgeries which are easier to detect, depending on what the researcher needs. Perceptual evaluation gives an average confusion of 44.06 percent between real and synthetic signatures which shows the realism of the synthetic ones. The utility of the synthesized signatures is demonstrated by studying the influence of the pen type and number of users on an automatic signature verifier.

On-line signature verification still remains a challenging task within biometrics . Due to their behavioural nature (opposed to anatomic biometric traits), signatures present a notable variability even between successive realizations. This leads to higher error rates than other largely used modalities such as iris or fingerprints and is one of the main reasons for the relatively slow deployment of this technology. As a step towards the improvement of signature recognition accuracy , the present paper explores and evaluates a novel approach that takes advantage of the performance boost that can be reached through the fusion of on-line and off-line signatures. In order to exploit the complementarity of the two modalities, we propose a method for the generation of enhanced synthetic static samples from on-line data. Such synthetic off-line signatures are used on a new on-line signature recognition architecture based on the combination of both types of data: real on-line samples and artificial off-line signatures synthesized from the real data. The new on-line recognition approach is evaluated on a public benchmark containing both real versions (on-line and off-line) of the exactly same signatures. Different findings and conclusions are drawn regarding the discriminative power of on-line and off-line signatures and of their potential combination both in the random and skilled impostors scenarios.

In this paper a sclera recognition and validation system is proposed. Here sclera segmentation was performed by Fuzzy logic-based clustering. Since the selera vessels are not prominent, image enhancement was required. A Fuzzy logic-based Brightness Preserving Dynamic Fuzzy Histogram Equalization and discrete Meyer wavelet was used to enhance the vessel patterns. For feature extraction, the Dense Local Binary Pattern (D-LBP) was used. D-LBP patch descriptors of each training image are used to form a bag of features, which is used to produce the training model. Support Vector Machines (SVMs) are used for classification. The UBIRIS version 1 dataset is used here for experimentation. An encouraging Equal Error Rate (EER) of 4.31% was achieved in our experiments.

This paper presents a new public available database for latent palmprint identification. Latent palmprint identification is an important research area which includes scientific challenges as well as social interest. Latent palmprints appear frequently in criminal investigations so developing accurate identification systems is critical in solving these investigations. Latent palmprint identification includes several pattern recognition challenges such as matching, feature extraction, and image processing. The lack of public latent palmprint databases has limited advances in scientific state-of-the-art researches. The database presented in this paper comprises 380 latent palmprints from 100 palms acquired under realistic conditions. The database includes the minutiae (position and orientation) taken manually and automatically. Additionally new research opportunities based on this database are presented as well as the benchmarks obtained with different publicly available minutiae extractors and matchers. As an example of the possibilities of the database a comparison between automatic and manual minutiae extraction is included.

The handwriting signature is one of the most popular behavioral biometric traits for person recognition. Such recognition systems capture the personal signing behaviour and its variability based on a limited number of enrolled signatures. In this paper a cognitive inspired model based on motor equivalence theory is developed to duplicate off-line signatures from one real on-line seed. This model achieves duplicated signatures with a natural variability. It is validated with an off-line signature verifier based on texture features and a SVM classifier. The results manifest the complementarity of the duplicated signatures and the utility of the model.

One of the main challenges of off-line signature verification is the absence of large databases. A possible alternative to overcome this problem is the generation of fully synthetic signature databases, not subject to legal or privacy concerns. In this paper we propose several approaches to the synthesis of off-line enhanced signatures from real dynamic information. These synthetic samples show a performance very similar to the one offered by real signatures, even increasing their discriminative power under the skilled forgeries scenario, one of the biggest challenges of handwriting recognition. Furthermore, the feasibility of synthetically increasing the enrolment sets is analysed, showing promising results.

Script identification is an important area in handwriting document image analysis field. The script identification at word level on documents written in multiple scripts is an open challenge for the scientific community and a real concern in countries with multiple official languages, e. G. The country like India. Such documents usually contain two scripts: the most of the document are written in the regional script while some words, acronyms or numbers are written in Roman script. In this case a word or even a character level script identification is required to locate the second script characters in the document. Here the major problem is the few script descriptors available for the script estimation which convey high error rates. The literatures try to address this problem by looking for more efficient descriptors. In this paper we propose a Multiple Training - One Test technique to alleviate this problem. Several classifiers are trained, each one with words of similar amount of information. A scale invariable word information index is defined for this sake. To identify the script of a query word, its word information index is worked out, and its script is identified with the most appropriate classifier. Accuracy improvements has been obtained with this promising technique, especially for the shorten words.

This paper introduces a novel method for the generation of high-resolution synthetic hand-print images. Specific traits, such as fingerprint, palmprint, and hand-shape, are synthesized to obtain a whole hand-print. Each trait is generated by a methodology that mimics the nature of the corresponding biometric data and their main degrees of freedom. The biometric traits are then integrated into a single high-resolution realistic image. A quantitative validation of the obtained patterns is carried out in the context of minutiae matching by comparing genuine and impostor distributions between synthetic and real hand-prints. The proposed approach also proved to be useful for algorithm training/optimization.

The objective of this paper is to provide a review of recent advances in automatic vibration- and audio-based fault diagnosis in machinery using condition monitoring strategies. It presents the most valuable techniques and results in this field and highlights the most profitable directions of research to present. Automatic fault diagnosis systems provide greater security in surveillance of strategic infrastructures, such as electrical substations and industrial scenarios, reduce downtime of machines, decrease maintenance costs, and avoid accidents which may have devastating consequences. Automatic fault diagnosis systems include signal acquisition, signal processing, decision support, and fault diagnosis. The paper includes a comprehensive bibliography of more than 100 selected references which can be used by researchers working in this field.

Script identification is an important step in multi-script document analysis. As different textures present in text portion of a script are the main distinct features of the script, in this paper, we proposed a new algorithm for printed script identification based on texture analysis. Since local patterns is a unifying concept for traditional statistical and structural approaches of texture analysis, here the basic idea is to use the histogram of the local patterns as description of the script stroke directions distribution which is the characteristic of every script. As local pattern, the basic version of the Local Binary Patterns (LBP) and a modified version of the Orientation of the Local Binary Patterns (OLBP) are proposed. A Least Square Support Vector Machine (LS-SVM) is used as identifier. The scheme has been verified on two databases. The first or training database is a database with 200 sheets of 10 different scripts. The scripts font is provided by the Google translator. The second or test database has been obtained by scanning different newspapers and books. It contains 5 common scripts among 10 different scripts of the first database. From the experiment we obtained encouraging results.

In this paper we propose a biometric sclera recognition and validation system. Here the sclera segmentation is performed bya time-adaptive active contour-based region growing technique. The sclera vessels are not prominent so image enhancement is required and hence a bank of 2D decomposition. A Haar wavelet multi-resolution filter is used to enhance the vessels pattern for better accuracy. For feature extraction, Dense Scale Invariant Feature Transform (D-SIFT) is used. D-SIFT patch descriptors of each training image are used to form bag of features by using k-means clustering and a spatial pyramid model, which is used to produce the training model. Support Vector Machines (SVMs) are used for classification. The UBIRIS version 1 dataset is used here for experimentation. Anencouraging Equal Error Rate (EER) of 0.66% is attained in the experiments presented.

The automatic handwritten signature verification is an open problem for the scientific community. The most of the published studies examine a generic document trying to locate where the signature has been written, to segment the signature removing complex backgrounds containing lines and letter and to determining whether the signature was made by the owner. However, there are no studies to determine automatically the author of a fake. This paper presents a first approach to the identification of a static signature forger. The underlying hypothesis is the fact that a forger finds difficult to fight against their own free natural way of writing, leading to the second hypothesis that under several conditions it is possible to isolate these features to determine a fake within a population of known forgers. The experiments shown that gray level based features are a good start point to detect who has written the signatures.

Several papers have recently appeared in the literature which propose pseudo-dynamic features for automatic static handwritten signature verification based on the use of gray level values from signature stroke pixels. Good results have been obtained using rotation invariant uniform local binary patterns LBP8,1riu2plus LBP16,2riu2and statistical measures from gray level co-occurrence matrices (GLCM) with MCYT and GPDS offline signature corpuses. In these studies the corpuses contain signatures written on a uniform white “nondistorting” background, however the gray level distribution of signature strokes changes when it is written on a complex background, such as a check or an invoice. The aim of this paper is to measure gray level features robustness when it is distorted by a complex background and also to propose more stable features. A set of different checks and invoices with varying background complexity is blended with the MCYT and GPDS signatures. The blending model is based on multiplication. The signature models are trained with genuine signatures on white background and tested with other genuine and forgeries mixed with different backgrounds. Results show that a basic version of local binary patterns (LBP) or local derivative and directional patterns are more robust than rotation invariant uniform LBP or GLCM features to the gray level distortion when using a support vector machine with histogram oriented kernels as a classifier.

This paper investigates new approaches for improving the conventional palmprint authentication performance by integrating color information. We firstly propose a new approach for image level combination of multiple color components to generate more reliable palmprint representation than the conventional gray level representation. This investigation is motivated to develop more robust palmprint representation that can be employed to achieve better performance for the conventional palmprint identification, with the same computational complexity. Secondly, this paper presents a rigorous analysis of different color representations for the palmprint images to ascertain the performance improvement using different feature representations (OLOF and SIFT) and different databases (scanner and webcam). The rigorous experimental results from this study suggest that the influence of color information can differently alter the performance gain, which varies with the nature of employed feature representation.

This paper proposes a hand-shape biometric device with two sensors, respectively working in the visible and 1470-nm bands. The inclusion of the 1470-nm band sensor is to improve both security and performance. The security is improved by including a spoof detector and the performance by combining both bands. The spoof detector combines three skin detection indices obtained by comparing the reflectance of the hand image in the red, green, and blue bands with that from the 1470-nm band. The hand tissues reflect the visible radiation while absorbing the 1470-nm radiation. The band combination is carried out at a score level which reduces the error rate because different images were obtained under different physical principles (reflection and absorption). The system performance has been evaluated with a database containing 10 acquisitions from each of a group of 100 users and 390 acquisitions from 62 imitated hands made of different materials. The experimental results confirm both security and performance improvement.

The objective of this competition (4NSigComp2010) is to ascertain the performance of automatic off-line signature verifiers to evaluate recent technology developments in the areas of document analysis and machine learning. The current paper focuses on the second scenario, which aims at performance evaluation of off-line signature verification systems on a newly-created large dataset that comprises genuine, simulated signatures produced by unskilled imitators or random signatures (genuine signatures from other writers). Ten systems were evaluated, and some interesting results are presented in terms of accuracy and execution time. The top ranking system attained an overall error of 8.94%. This result interestingly correlates with the top ranking accuracy achieved in a previous signature verification competition at ICDAR 2009.

A method for Off-line Handwritten Signature Verification is described. It works at the global and local image level, measuring the stroke gray-level variations by means of wavelet analysys and statistical texture features. This method begins with a proposed background removal. Then Wavelet Analysis allows to estimate and alleviate the global influence of ink-type, and finally, properties of the Co-occurrence Matrix are used as features representing individual characteristics at local level. Genuine samples have been used for train an SVM model, random and skilled forgeries have been used for testing it. Experiments were conducted on three differente databases (MCYT75, GPDS100, and GPDS750). Results are reasonable according to the state of the art and approaches that use the same public available database (MCYT75) and prove the feasibility of the proposed methodology.

Features representing information about pressure distribution from a static image of a handwritten signature are analyzed for an offline verification system. From gray-scale images, its histogram is calculated and used as "spectrum'' for calculation of pseudo-cepstral coefficients. Finally, the unique minimum-phase sequence is estimated and used as feature vector for signature verification. The optimal number of pseudo-coefficients is estimated for best system performance. Experiments were carried out using a database containing signatures from 100 individuals. The robustness of the analyzed system for simple forgeries is tested out with a LS-SVM model. For the sake of completeness, a comparison of the results obtained by the proposed approach with similar works published using pseudo-dynamic feature for offline signature verification is presented.

In this paper, we propose to quantify the quality of the recorded voice through objective nonlinear measures. Quantification of speech signal quality has been traditionally carried out with linear techniques since the classical model of voice production is a linear approximation. Nevertheless, nonlinear behaviors in the voice production process have been shown. This paper studies the usefulness of six nonlinear chaotic measures based on nonlinear dynamics theory in the discrimination between two levels of voice quality: healthy and pathological. The studied measures are first- and second-order Renyi entropies, the correlation entropy and the correlation dimension. These measures were obtained from the speech signal in the phase-space domain. The values of the first minimum of mutual information function and Shannon entropy were also studied. Two databases were used to assess the usefulness of the measures: a multiquality database composed of four levels of voice quality (healthy voice and three levels of pathological voice); and a commercial database (MEEI Voice Disorders) composed of two levels of voice quality (healthy and pathological voices). A classifier based on standard neural networks was implemented in order to evaluate the measures proposed. Global success rates of 82.47% (multiquality database) and 99.69% (commercial database) were obtained.

The current need for large databases to evaluate automatic biometric recognition systems has motivated the developing of the GPDS-960 corpus, an off-line handwritten signature database which contains 24 genuine signatures and 30 forgeries of 960 individuals. This paper describes the GPDS signature corpus, gives details about the acquisition protocols and presents preliminary verification results obtained using the GPDS data.

The effect of changing the image resolution over an off-line signature verification system performance is analyzed. The geometrical features used for the system analyzed in this paper are based on two vectors which represent the envelope and the interior stroke distribution in polar and Cartesian coordinates. Image resolution is progressively diminished from an initial 600 ppp resolution till 45 ppp. The robustness of the analyzed system for random and simple forgeries is tested out with a hidden Markov model. The results show that 150 ppp offers a good trade-off between performance and image resolution for static features.

This paper presents a set of geometric signature features for offline automatic signature verification based on the description of the signature envelope and the interior stroke distribution in polar and Cartesian coordinates. The features have been calculated using 16 bits fixed-point arithmetic and tested with different classifiers, such as hidden Markov models, support vector machines, and Euclidean distance classifier. The experiments have shown promising results in the task of discriminating random and simple forgeries.

This correspondence presents a new two-stage adaptive vector quantizer of LSF parameters in LPC speech coding. The first codebook is adapted by a partition-delete operation, whereas the code-vectors of the second codebook remain unchanged. The objective and subjective evaluations show that the proposed scheme offers transparent quantization with 22 b/frame.>