Palmprint recognition based on local DCT feature extraction

Abstract

In this paper we present a method which extracts features from palmprint images by applying the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) on small blocks of the segmented region of interest consisting of the middle palm area. The region is extracted after careful preprocessing to normalize for position and illumination. This method takes advantage of the well known capability of the DCT to represent natural images using only a few coefficients by performing the DCT on each block. After ranking the coefficients by magnitude and selecting only the most prominent, these are then concatenated into a compact feature vector that represents each palmprint. Recognition and verification experiments using the PolyU Palmprint Database show that this is an effective and efficient approach, with a recognition rate above 99 % and Equal Error Rate (EER) of less than 3 %. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.