Individual identification via electrocardiogram analysis

Background: During last decade the use of ECG recordings in biometric recognition studies has increased. ECG characteristics made it suitable for subject identification: it is unique, present in all living individuals, and hard to forge. However, in spite of the great number of approaches found in literature, no agreement exists on the most appropriate methodology. This study aimed at providing a survey of the techniques used so far in ECG-based human identification. Specifically, a pattern recognition perspective is here proposed providing a unifying framework to appreciate previous studies and, hopefully, guide future research. Methods: We searched for papers on the subject from the earliest available date using relevant electronic databases (Medline, IEEEXplore, Scopus, and Web of Knowledge). The following terms were used in different combinations: electrocardiogram, ECG, human identification, biometric, authentication and individual variability. The electronic sources were last searched on 1st March 2015. In our selection we included published research on peer-reviewed journals, books chapters and conferences proceedings. The search was performed for English language documents. Results: 100 pertinent papers were found. Number of subjects involved in the journal studies ranges from 10 to 502, age from 16 to 86, male and female subjects are generally present. Number of analysed leads varies as well as the recording conditions. Identification performance differs widely as well as verification rate. Many studies refer to publicly available databases (Physionet ECG databases repository) while others rely on proprietary recordings making difficult them to compare. As a measure of overall accuracy we computed a weighted average of the identification rate and equal error rate in authentication scenarios. Identification rate resulted equal to 94.95 % while the equal error rate equal to 0.92 %. Conclusions: Biometric recognition is a mature field of research. Nevertheless, the use of physiological signals features, such as the ECG traits, needs further improvements. ECG features have the potential to be used in daily activities such as access control and patient handling as well as in wearable electronics applications. However, some barriers still limit its growth. Further analysis should be addressed on the use of single lead recordings and the study of features which are not dependent on the recording sites (e.g. fingers, hand palms). Moreover, it is expected that new techniques will be developed using fiducials and non-fiducial based features in order to catch the best of both approaches. ECG recognition in pathological subjects is also worth of additional investigations.

A importância do DNA na Medicina Dentária Forense

Com o presente trabalho pretende-se discutir a importância do DNA na resolução de casos de investigação forense. O Homem, desde os tempos mais remotos tem revelado interesse na confirmação da identidade dos seus semelhantes, pelo desenvolvimento e prática de diversas técnicas de identificação. A partir de uma revisão da literatura, fez-se o estudo dos métodos de identificação humana, sendo este mais aprofundado no que diz respeito ao DNA. Frequentemente são encontrados corpos em que a única peça disponível para o processo de identificação é o dente. As peças dentárias são as estruturas mais resistentes e estáveis do corpo humano, mantendo as suas características e propriedades por longos períodos de tempo pós-morte. A análise do DNA contribui de forma muito importante para os processos de reconhecimento humano, principalmente em casos em que outros métodos de identificação falham devido a decomposição, fragmentação, incineração ou inexistência de dados comparativos ante-morte. Para a obtenção de um perfil genético é necessário executar as seguintes etapas: extração do DNA, sua quantificação e amplificação seguida de análise de determinadas regiões do genoma. Nos dias de hoje, muitos casos de identificação necessitam de uma abordagem multidisciplinar, isto porque em algumas situações existe falta de material padrão ou, por outro lado, pode haver mais do que uma evidência a ser examinada.

Unveiling the Biometric Potential of Finger-Based ECG Signals

The ECG signal has been shown to contain relevant information for human identification. Even though results validate the potential of these signals, data acquisition methods and apparatus explored so far compromise user acceptability, requiring the acquisition of ECG at the chest. In this paper, we propose a finger-based ECG biometric system, that uses signals collected at the fingers, through a minimally intrusive 1-lead ECG setup recurring to Ag/AgCl electrodes without gel as interface with the skin. The collected signal is significantly more noisy than the ECG acquired at the chest, motivating the application of feature extraction and signal processing techniques to the problem. Time domain ECG signal processing is performed, which comprises the usual steps of filtering, peak detection, heartbeat waveform segmentation, and amplitude normalization, plus an additional step of time normalization. Through a simple minimum distance criterion between the test patterns and the enrollment database, results have revealed this to be a promising technique for biometric applications.

Spatial analysis of corresponding fingerprint features from match and close non-match populations

The development of statistical models for forensic fingerprint identification purposes has been the subject of increasing research attention in recent years. This can be partly seen as a response to a number of commentators who claim that the scientific basis for fingerprint identification has not been adequately demonstrated. In addition, key forensic identification bodies such as ENFSI [1] and IAI [2] have recently endorsed and acknowledged the potential benefits of using statistical models as an important tool in support of the fingerprint identification process within the ACE-V framework. In this paper, we introduce a new Likelihood Ratio (LR) model based on Support Vector Machines (SVMs) trained with features discovered via morphometric and spatial analyses of corresponding minutiae configurations for both match and close non-match populations often found in AFIS candidate lists. Computed LR values are derived from a probabilistic framework based on SVMs that discover the intrinsic spatial differences of match and close non-match populations. Lastly, experimentation performed on a set of over 120,000 publicly available fingerprint images (mostly sourced from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) datasets) and a distortion set of approximately 40,000 images, is presented, illustrating that the proposed LR model is reliably guiding towards the right proposition in the identification assessment of match and close non-match populations. Results further indicate that the proposed model is a promising tool for fingerprint practitioners to use for analysing the spatial consistency of corresponding minutiae configurations.

La Genetica forense: utilidad en la administracion de Justicia, repercusion social y aspectos eticos

Los diccionarios oficiales de la Real Academia de Lengua Española no contienen la palabra forensia, que sin embargo es de amplio uso en el entorno jurídico. El término"forensia" se usa en la mayoría de los casos como equivalente a"ciencia forense" significando la aplicación de la ciencia (en su sentido más amplio) para responder a cuestiones legales y ayudar a la administración de la Justicia. Desde un punto de vista práctico la forensia se utiliza como una vía de autentificación de datos y hechos que tienen interés legal. El uso moderno del término"forensia" en vez de"ciencia forense" es considerado incorrecto por ciertos sectores de la jurisprudencia básicamente por dos motivos: i) la forensia en sentido amplio también implica campos no científicos como el arte y la misma jurisprudencia y ii) por ser el término"forensia" un sinónimo de legal o relacionado con los tribunales.

La Genetica forense: utilidad en la administracion de Justicia, repercusion social y aspectos eticos

Los diccionarios oficiales de la Real Academia de Lengua Española no contienen la palabra forensia, que sin embargo es de amplio uso en el entorno jurídico. El término"forensia" se usa en la mayoría de los casos como equivalente a"ciencia forense" significando la aplicación de la ciencia (en su sentido más amplio) para responder a cuestiones legales y ayudar a la administración de la Justicia. Desde un punto de vista práctico la forensia se utiliza como una vía de autentificación de datos y hechos que tienen interés legal. El uso moderno del término"forensia" en vez de"ciencia forense" es considerado incorrecto por ciertos sectores de la jurisprudencia básicamente por dos motivos: i) la forensia en sentido amplio también implica campos no científicos como el arte y la misma jurisprudencia y ii) por ser el término"forensia" un sinónimo de legal o relacionado con los tribunales.

Gait Analysis for Classification

This thesis describes a representation of gait appearance for the purpose of person identification and classification. This gait representation is based on simple localized image features such as moments extracted from orthogonal view video silhouettes of human walking motion. A suite of time-integration methods, spanning a range of coarseness of time aggregation and modeling of feature distributions, are applied to these image features to create a suite of gait sequence representations. Despite their simplicity, the resulting feature vectors contain enough information to perform well on human identification and gender classification tasks. We demonstrate the accuracy of recognition on gait video sequences collected over different days and times and under varying lighting environments. Each of the integration methods are investigated for their advantages and disadvantages. An improved gait representation is built based on our experiences with the initial set of gait representations. In addition, we show gender classification results using our gait appearance features, the effect of our heuristic feature selection method, and the significance of individual features.

Banca en el internet

Los cajeros electrónicos y la implementación de servicios por medio telefónico fueron los primeros instrumentos que hicieron que fuera viable para el usuario beneficiarse de atención sin tener que acudir a las instalaciones de la institución financiera

Improving face recognition with multispectral fusion and support vector machines

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Análise de polimorfismos do DNA mitocondrial em indivíduos residentes na grande São Paulo para aplicação na identificação humana

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Importância da radiografia panorâmica como instrumento auxiliar às práticas clínica e odontolegal

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Sistema biométrico de identificação de pessoas utilizando poros e minúcias de impressões digitais

The use of physical characteristics for human identification is known as biometrics. Among the many biometrics traits available, the fingerprint is the most widely used. The fingerprint identification is based on the impression patterns, as the pattern of ridges and minutiae, characteristics of first and second levels respectively. The current identification systems use these two levels of fingerprint features due to the low cost of the sensors. However, the recent advances in sensor technology, became possible to use third level features present within the ridges, such as the perspiration pores. Recent studies show that the use of third-level features can increase security and fraud protection in biometric systems, since they are difficult to reproduce. In addition, recent researches have also focused on multibiometrics recognition due to its many advantages. The goal of this research project was to apply fusion techniques for fingerprint recognition in order to combine minutia, ridges and pore-based methods and, thus, provide more robust biometrics recognition systems, and also to develop an automated fingerprint identification system using these three methods of recognition. We evaluated isotropic-based and adaptive-based automatic pore extraction methods, and the fusion of pore-based method with the identification methods based on minutiae and ridges. The experiments were performed on the public database PolyUHRF and showed a reduction of approximately 16% in the EER compared to the best results obtained by the methods individually

Laboratório de Investigação de Paternidade FCFAr-UNESP: Histórico e Atualidades

The Laboratory of Investigation on Paternity - FCFAr-UNESP performs an outreach university activity according to 53, UNESP Resolution article 3 , published on November 3, 2004. This article is classified in Human Rights area involving community services, training highly qualified human resources and scientific development. This kind of service is performed with advanced technological resources and quality control similar to the international standard. in human identification by DNA research results are available . The laboratory offers a highly qualified service at a fair price, allowing the low-income population access to such tests.

Skeletal Markers of Activity: Methodological and Interpretative Reflections after the study of the whole Frassetto Sassari identified skeletal collection

Entheses (skeletal attachment sites of muscles and ligaments) and their pathologic modifications (enthesopathies) have long been used as skeletal markers of activity in bioarchaeological (reconstruction of past populations lifestyle) and forensic (personal identification) contexts. However, a functional interpretation of these markers have to deal critically with the multifactorial etiology of the same. Factors such as sex, age, genetic factors, mechanical stress, metabolic conditions, etc.. can compete to produce the observed morphological variability at each attachment site. The aim of this thesis has drawn on the ongoing debate about the informativeness of entheseal modifications as skeletal markers of activity and represent a deepening of the actual knowledge about the relationship between these characters and sex, age and physical activity. For this purpose, the whole "Frassetto” identified skeletal collection of Sassari (Sardinia, Italy) was analyzed. The collection includes the skeletal remains of about 600 individuals died in the late 19th and early 20th century for whom information regarding sex, age at death and, in many cases the occupation are known The results obtained highlight the great age importance on the entheseal modifications. The differences observed between sexes may reflect differences in the level or type of activity performed in life, but could also be related to a different bone tissue response to mechanical stress due to hormonal factors and different growth rates. The role of biomechanical stress related to professional activities remains doubtful. This is probably partly attributable to the analyzed sample characteristics (preponderance of farmers compared with other professions, different mean age of the considered professional subsamples), which has hampered the analysis of samples homogenous with regard to age, which is very influential on the entheses and enthesopathies expression.

Unconstrained and Contactless Hand Geometry Biometrics

This paper presents a hand biometric system for contact-less, platform-free scenarios, proposing innovative methods in feature extraction, template creation and template matching. The evaluation of the proposed method considers both the use of three contact-less publicly available hand databases, and the comparison of the performance to two competitive pattern recognition techniques existing in literature: namely Support Vector Machines (SVM) and k-Nearest Neighbour (k-NN). Results highlight the fact that the proposed method outcomes existing approaches in literature in terms of computational cost, accuracy in human identification, number of extracted features and number of samples for template creation. The proposed method is a suitable solution for human identification in contact-less scenarios based on hand biometrics, providing a feasible solution to devices with limited hardware requirements like mobile devices