Title: Biometric identification using knee X-rays

Authors: Lior Shamir, Shari Ling, Salim Rahimi, Luigi Ferrucci, Ilya G. Goldberg

Addresses: Laboratory of Genetics, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, 251 Bayview boulevard, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA. ' Clinical Research Branch, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, 3001 S. Hanover Street, Baltimore, MD 21225, USA. ' Department of Computer Engineering, State University of New York at Farmingdale, 2350 Broadhollow Rd, Farmingdale, NY 11735, USA. ' Clinical Research Branch, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, 3001 S. Hanover Street, Baltimore, MD 21225, USA. ' Laboratory of Genetics, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, 251 Bayview boulevard, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA

Abstract: Identification of people often makes use of unique features of the face, fingerprints and retina. Beyond this, a similar identifying process can be applied to internal parts of the body that are not visible to the unaided eye. Here we show that knee X-rays can be used for the identification of individual persons. The image analysis method is based on the wnd-charm algorithm, which has been found effective for the diagnosis of clinical conditions of knee joints. Experimental results show that the rank-10 identification accuracy using a dataset of 425 individuals is ∼56%, and the rank-1 accuracy is ∼34%. The dataset contained knee X-rays taken several years apart from each other, showing that the identifiable features correspond to specific persons, rather than the present clinical condition of the joint.

Keywords: biometrics; knee X-rays; radiography; knee bone; knee joints; human recognition; image analysis; knees.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBM.2009.024279

International Journal of Biometrics, 2009 Vol.1 No.3, pp.365 - 370

Published online: 30 Mar 2009 *

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