Full description
The pressing infant biometric problem is to find a biometric means to identify infants cheaply, reliably, and automatically. Physical traits of infants are tiny, delicate, and grow rapidly. The authors focus on a novel area of friction-ridge skin as a potential answer: the ball under the big toe. The ballprint is readily accessible, with more features and larger ridges than a fingerprint. The authors followed 54 newborns for 2 years, capturing their ballprints with an adult fingerprint scanner within 3 days of birth, at 2 months, at 6 months, and at 2 years. The authors show the growth of the ballprint is isotropic rather than affine during infancy. The isotropic growth rate from birth can be measured by the change in inter-ridge spacing, which the authors show precisely mirrors change in physical length from birth, as recorded by World Health Organisation for large, diverse infant populations. From 2 months of age, by using isotropic scaling to compensate for growth, the authors successfully matched good quality images with 0% equal error rate using existing adult fingerprint technology, even for captures 22 months apart. These findings flag the value of ballprints as a practical means of infant identification, by themselves, or together or sequentially with other biometrics.Data time period: 2013 to 2014
Subjects
Applied Mathematics |
Applied research |
Biological Mathematics |
Biometrics (access control) |
Fingerprint identification |
Health |
Health and Support Services |
Health and Support Services Not Elsewhere Classified |
Health Not Elsewhere Classified |
Image matching |
Image recognition |
Mathematical Sciences |
Medical and Health Sciences |
Other Health |
Paediatrics and Reproductive Medicine |
Paediatrics |
Paediatrics and Reproductive Medicine Not Elsewhere Classified |
Skin |
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Identifiers
- Local : 5824539a990d0a8bdb70ff4686117e80
