October 26, 2005
The battle for veins
Fujitsu and Hitachi battle for the best biometric vein scanning technique. The key difference, besides the actual scanned surface, is that the palm technique is based on a ccd chip which captures the images that are reflected by the light that's being emitted, where the finger technique the actual picture is taken with light that's been transmitted through the finger.
The big advantage of the vein scanning technique in general is that is works under virtually every circumstance, it's fast and best of all "contactless". The vein scanning algorithm is optimized for verification and performs well for 1:N searches on small databases (<250).
Hitachi has developed two different algorithms;
* one that meassures from above, and
* one that meassures sideways.
For physical access the first algorithm has been used where for logical access the second is used. The bad news is, they are not compatible!
Just recently Hitachi launched a "Grip Vein" scanning technique. Although I haven't played with it yet, I'm sure this algorithm is not compatible with the first two.
It's my opinion that Hitachi will eventually win the vein battle. Finger based biometrics provide more user comfort and flexibility than hand based biometrics, and it seems that Hitachi is speeding up development with the launch of a notebook-based vein fingerscanner.
