Unconstrained Hand Dorsal Veins Image Database and Recognition System

Hand veins can be used effectively in biometric recognition since they are internal organs that, in contrast to fingerprints, are robust under external environment effects such as dirt and paper cuts. Moreover, they form a complex rich shape that is unique, even in identical twins, and allows a high degree of freedom. However, most currently employed hand-based biometric systems rely on hand-touch devices to capture images with the desired quality. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, most hand-based biometric systems have become undesirable due to their possible impact on the spread of the pandemic. Consequently, new contactless hand-based biometric recognition systems and databases are desired to keep up with the rising hygiene awareness. One contribution of this research is the creation of a database for hand dorsal veins images obtained contact-free with a variation in capturing distance and rotation angle. This database consists of 1548 images collected from 86 participants whose ages ranged from 19 to 84 years. For the other research contribution, a novel geometrical feature extraction method has been developed based on the Curvelet Transform. This method is useful for extracting robust rotation invariance features from vein images. The database attributes and the veins recognition results are analyzed to demonstrate their efficacy.