Ant colony optimization based fuzzy binary decision tree for bimodal hand knuckle verification system

0957-4174/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. A http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2012.07.042 ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (A. Kum (M. Hanmandlu), [email protected] (H.M. Gupta) 1 http://www.hitachi.com/New/cnews/071022b.pdf. In the recent trends of touch-less biometric authentication systems, hand knuckles from dorsal part of the hand is gaining popularity as a potential candidate for verification/recognition in variety of security applications. However, most of the available knuckle verification systems offer fixed security achieved for desired level of accuracy which cannot meet the varying levels of security requirements. This paper presents a bimodal knuckle verification system which is designed to meet a wide range of applications varying from civilian to high security regions. We use ant colony optimization (ACO) to choose the optimal fusion parameters corresponding to each level of security. The developed verification system utilizes fuzzy binary decision tree (FBDT) which is aimed at decision making in two classes: genuine (accept) and imposter (reject) using matching scores computed from the knuckle database. The FBDT is implemented using fuzzy Gini index for the selection of the tree nodes. The experiments are carried out on four publicly available HongKong PolyU knuckle databases named as: left index, right index, left middle and right middle with four bimodal systems: left–right index, left–right middle, left index–middle and right index–middle. The experimental results from these four bimodal knuckle databases validate the contributions of the proposed work. 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.