Special Issue on Multimodal Biometrics Multimodal Biometrics Special Issue

Since its beginning in 2003, the International Summer School on
Biometrics proved to be a unique forum, where advanced research
students and lecturers in biometrics gathered together for a full
week of study in several aspects of the science and technology of
biometric recognition. This special issue includes some contributions
of the school lecturers and the school students.
The papers included represent the diversity of the current issues
of biometric technologies.
Three papers are related to the use of face images in recognition,
but investigate different problems. One is on the mechanisms of
human face perception to define some guidelines for automatic
recognition systems. The second paper proposes a novel technique
for liveness detection from the face motion. The third paper addresses
the face spoofing problem, proposing a methodology to improve
the recognition performances despite impostor attacks.
One paper addresses fingerprint matching, which is a classical
biometric modality, but from a new perspective. In particular the
modeling of fingerprint skin elasticity and distortions is discussed
in detail with a view to enhance practical applications.
Handwriting verification is addressed from a multi-modal and
multi-algorithmic perspective. Two papers address the system
security. The first uses multiple modalities and watermarking
techniques applied to biometric templates. The last paper discusses
the introduction of biometric data in e-passports, which is
one of the most recent applications of biometrics.
The school meetings have been a rare opportunity to evaluate
different technological challenges and the current advances while
sharing existing know-how in tutorials. The latter is important as
the amount of studies have been massive in the field. However,
the hope has been to give not only new insights, but also to promote
the application of a research which is already mature in
many respects to offer an answer to a variety of problems, ranging
from security enforcement to advanced man machine
interfaces.