Anil K. Jain and Sharath Pankanti
September, 2000
An accurate automatic personal identification is critical to a wide range of application domains such as access control, electronic commerce, and welfare benefits disbursement. Traditional personal identification methods (e.g., passwords, and PIN) suffer from a number of drawbacks and are unable to positively identify a person. Biometrics refers to automatic identification of an individual based on her distinct physiological and/or behavioral traits. While biometrics is not an identification panacea, it is beginning to provide very powerful tools for a variety of new applications (e.g., cellular phones, smart cards and international border control) requiring positive identification. This work attempts to summarize important research issues in biometrics.
You are granted permission for the non-commercial reproduction, distribution, display, and performance of this technical report in any format.