Biometrics is the science of recognizing people by physical characteristics. Traditional approaches for identity verification have been based on using passwords, access cards or PIN numbers that can be stolen or forgotten. By providing increased security and convenience, biometrics have begun to see widespread deployment in access control, e-commerce, homeland security and retail applications.

The goal of this talk is to present an overview of state-of-the-art fingerprint-based identity verification technology. We will begin by reviewing the basic pattern-based and minutiae-based approaches to finger print recognition. Then, we will introduce Bioscrypt Core, which is the award-winning pattern-based algorithm used in current Bioscrypt products. Biometric Key Binding (BKB) which is a method for encoding and retrieving a digital key using fingerprints will be discussed next. Finally, we will provide our forecast of future trends, potentials and challenges in the fingerprint industry.

Omid Jahromi is a Senior Algorithm Developer with Bioscrypt Inc. Mississauga, ON, Canada. He obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran in 1994 and 1997, respectively. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, in April 2002. In 1990, he ranked among the Top Ten most outstanding students in the nation in the Iranian national university entrance competition. He has been the recipient of the University of Toronto Doctoral Fellowship in 1998, 1999 and 2000, and the Frank Howard Guest Graduate Scholarship in 2001. Dr Jahromi was a post doctoral fellow at the Artificial Perception Laboratory, ECE Department, University of Toronto from September 2002 till August 2004. His research interests include multirate signal processing, sensor networks, ill-posed problems and signal processing for biometric applications.