Pattern Recognition 66 (2017) 34–43

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Pattern Recognition
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pr

Finger-vein image matching based on adaptive curve transformation MARK

⁎
Jinfeng Yang , Yihua Shi, Guimin Jia
Tianjin Key Lab for Advanced Signal Processing, Civil Aviation University of China, P.O. Box 9, Tianjin, PR China

A R T I C L E I N F O A BS T RAC T

Keywords: Extracting reliable finger-vein features directly from original finger-vein images is not an easy task since the
Biometrics captured finger-vein images are always poor in quality. This paper proposes an effective method of finger-vein
Finger-vein recognition feature representation based on adaptive vector field estimation. Considering that the vein networks consist of
Spatial curve filter vein curve segments, a set of spatial curve filters (SCFs) with variations in curvature and orientation are first
Vector field
designed. To fit vein curves locally and closely, SCFs is then weighted using a variable Gaussian model. Due to
the fact that finger veins vary in diameters naturally, an effective curve length field (CLF) estimation method is
proposed to make weighted SCFs adaptive to vein-width variations. Finally, with CLF constrain, vein vector
fields(VVF) are built for finger-vein network feature description. Experimental results show that the proposed
method is highly powerful in improving finger-vein matching accuracy.

1. Introduction curvature-based method [11] and transform-based method [12–14],

The veins used for biometrics in finger are superficial vessels that
are present between two layers of superficial fascia without accom-
panied arteries [1]. As veins are sheltered by the human skin, the
superficial veins embedded in subcutaneous tissue can not be visua-
lized clearly by visible light. The finger vein pattern is therefore very
difficult to be illicitly falsified and stolen in practice, which can greatly
improves the reliability and safety of finger-vein traits in real applica-
tions, such as ATMs, PC login, and access control.
Finger-vein images are often captured using the near infrared (NIR)
light (700–900 nm) in a transillumination manner. The NIR light can
transmit through a finger and be absorbed by tissues [2]. Since the
hemoglobin in veins absorbs more NIR radiation than other tissues
(such as muscle and bones), some darker “shadows” can be casted on
an imaging plane. Thus, using a NIR camera, the finger-vein imageries
can be recorded successfully.
The quality of finger-vein images is not always good owing to light
attenuation in tissues. The NIR lights penetrating a human finger can
be refracted, absorbed and scattered by the biological tissue [3–5].
Since the biological tissue can be viewed as a complex heterogenous
optical medium, the NIR lights suffer from significant scattering in
addition to absorbtion when they propagate into this medium [6,7].
This can greatly reduce the contrast between the venous and non-
venous regions, and further impair the accuracy of finger-vein image
matching. Hence, many methods, i.e. adaptive histogram equalization
method [8], morphological method [9], line-tracking method [10],
have been proposed for handling low-contrast finger-vein recognition
problem.
Naturally, improving finger-vein image quality is helpful for
increasing the finger-vein recognition accuracy. Therefore, to remove
light scattering phenomenon caused by biological tissues, an depth-
dependent point spread function (D-PSF) was proposed in [15,16], and
addressing the blurring issue in finger-vein imaging, we also proposed
a scattering removal method based on a biological optical model [17–
19]. However, the proposed scattering removal methods still can not
handle the finger-vein restoration problems effectively and efficiently.
Hence, the demand of directly extracting reliable finger-vein features
from original finger-vein images is still more insistent in finger-vein
recognition. Although the transform-based methods were reported to
behave better than others in finger-vein information exploitation,
reliably extracting primitive features related to finger-vein network
patterns is still an open problem.
The discriminations among finger-vein networks are most valuable
for finger-vein recognition. Venous regions are apparently meaningful
for primitive finger-vein feature representation. Hence, vein-ridge
based feature description strategies are usually desirable in network
feature representation. For ridge based feature analysis, orientation
field estimation has been preferred in practice. This has been studied
exhaustively in fingerprint feature description, such as polynomial
model [20], zero-pole model [21], and rational complex function model
[22]. However, orientation field estimation methods suitable for
fingerprints are obviously not appropriate for finger-vein images

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: jfyang@cauc.edu.cn (J. Yang).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.patcog.2017.01.008
Received 2 August 2016; Received in revised form 4 January 2017; Accepted 6 January 2017
Available online 07 January 2017
0031-3203/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
J. Yang et al. Pattern Recognition 66 (2017) 34–43

because the ridge structures are totally different between fingerprints Curve
and finger veins. In order to implement ridge-specific enhancement, a model
curve filter transform (CFT) was proposed for orientation field estima-
tion in electron micrograph images [23]. Unfortunately, this method is
Spatial
still incapable by itself of handling low-contrast ridge enhancement curve filter
problem. Moreover, incidentally generating false ridges is also an 2D Gausian
model
inherent drawback of CFT. Therefore, developing a vein-ridge-specific
orientation estimation strategy is promising for reliably exploiting Weighted spatial
finger-vein network features in finger-vein images. curve filter
Curve length
In this paper, we focus on two fundamental problems: spatial curve field
filter design and accurate vector field estimation. They are directly Finger-vein
related to the effective network feature representation of finger-vein image
trait in personal identification. The main contributions of this paper are
the followings: Finger-vein
vector field
1. A set of spatial curve filters(SCFs) are designed using a variable
curve model in curvature and orientation.
2. A Gaussian weighted curve model is proposed to reduce filtering Matching
errors in fitting vein diameters.
3. An efficient method is proposed for reliably estimating curve length Fig. 2. Block diagram of the proposed method.
fields (CLF). This can make SCFs adaptive to vein-width variations.
imaging plane is set for finger-vein imaging. The luminaire is a NIR
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we light-emitting diode (LED) array at a wavelength of 760 nm, and in
briefly introduce a homemade finger-vein imaging system. Section 3 NIR transillumination, a CCD sensor is place at the bottom of the
details the proposed method in finger-vein feature representation. homemade box device.
Experimental results are reported in Section 5. Finally, Section 6 To localize the ROIs from finger-vein images, an simple but
summarizes this paper. effective method proposed in our previous work [13,27] is used here,
as shown in Fig. 1(b). From Fig. 1(b), we can see that veins cast dark
2. Finger-vein image acquisition “shadows” on imaging plane while the surrounding tissue (e.g., fat)
presents a bright background. We can note from Fig. 1(b) that the
To obtain finger-vein images, we have designed a homemade finger- sample ROIs have small intra-class variation, which is clearly beneficial
vein imaging system, which can automatically capture a finger-vein for accurate finger-vein recognition.
imagery when a finger is available in a collection groove, as shown in
Fig. 1(a). An open window (7 0 × 25 mm 2) centered in the width of

Fig. 1. Image acquisition. (a) A homemade finger-vein imaging system. (b) ROI segmentation results of different finger-vein images using the method proposed in [13,27].

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J. Yang et al.
3. Adaptive vector field estimation
In this section, the proposed algorithm for adaptive vector field
estimation is presented in detail. The complete framework is illustrated
in Fig. 2, consisting of SCF design, CLF estimation, Gaussian weighted
SCF and vector field estimation.
In the first step shown in Fig. 2, we propose an inferior arc-curve
model whose curve length, curvature and orientation are all variable.
Based this curve model, SCFs are then generated. Since the veins vary
in width, the SCFs with fixed curve length are surely not optimal in
vein-ridge information exploration. In order to assign a suitable curve
length to each pixel-point, the CLF of a finger-vein image is estimated
adaptively. In fact, the contributions of pixels in a curve are different
when implementing filter operation, we therefore use a Gaussian model
to weight the obtained SCFs. Under CLF constrain, based on the
weighted SCFs, we finally can generate an adaptive vector field that can
give a reliable vector representation of the finger-vein network. Finger-
vein image matching is implemented by Phase-Only-Correlation be-
tween two finger-vein vector fields.
3.1. Spatial curve filter design
In this section, we first introduce a curve model, and then construct
a set of spatial curve filters. Considering vein variation in shape, we
define a variable inferior arc-curve model as
⎛ sin α ⎞
2 ⎛ cos α ⎞
2
C ( x , y , κ , α ) = ⎜x − ⎟ + ⎜y + ⎟ − κ −2,
⎝ κ ⎠ ⎝ κ ⎠
where κ and α respectively denote the curvature and the direction of a
tangent line at the center point. The scope of C (x, y, κ , α ) is here
constrained by the inferior arc-curve length LP, as shown in Fig. 3.
Thus, under LP constraint, given a curvature κm and an orientation αn,
we can obtain different arc-curves, as shown in Fig. 4.
Using C (x, y, κ , α ) as constrain, a spatial curve filter with LP × LP
size is defined as
⎧1, C (x, y, κm, αn ) = 0
f mn (x, y)|LP × LP = ⎨ . convenience, f mn (x, y) |LP × LP defined by Eq. (3) is called a Gaussian
⎩ 0, otherwise
Hence, let M and N be the numbers of curvatures and orientations
respectively, for a given curve length LP, a set of SCFs with M × N can
be generated accordingly by varying κm and αn. For illustration, we list
some SCFs with a LP × LP window size in Fig. 5.
It should be noted that a filter f mn (x, y) with a fixed LP × LP window
size usually can not perform well in curve-like ridge detection, as
shown in Fig. 6. Using two CLFs (α1 = 0 o , α2 = 90 o ) with κ = 0.2 and
LP=15 respectively filter an image shown in Fig. 6(a) in horizontal and
vertical directions, we can clearly see from Fig. 6(b) and (c) that the two
filtered ellipses are both distorted severely. Hence, in order to make the
curve length LP locally and adaptively match the real finger-vein ridges,
LP should be estimated pixelwise over a finger-vein image.
I LP reasonably, we should begin with vein-width computation. In [11],
y a curvature-based method had been proposed to compute the widths of
C(x , y, κ ,α)
P α
x By applying an adaptive local threshold method proposed in [14], a
κ coarse finger-vein network is first extracted, as shown in Fig. 9(b).
LP
Fig. 3. The proposed curve model. The shape of this model is determined by three
variables: curvature κ, orientation α and curve length L.
Pattern Recognition 66 (2017) 34–43
3.2. Weighted SCF by gaussian model
In this section, we report a method of weighting SCFs. To some
extend, the distortions illustrated in Fig. 6(b) and (c) arise from valuing
the curve length LP unreasonably. Therefore, to make SCFs more
effective in vein-curve feature exploitation, we should further weight
them adaptively considering the spatial errors between vein curves and
curve models. Based on the findings in embryology [29,30], the
curvatures and shapes of veins are of randomness. The spatial
differences between the real vein curves and the proposed curve
models can not be therefore reduced since the proposed curve models
are expressed using inferior arc-curves with finite curvature variation
(see Eq. (1)). To understand this intuitively, we plot two diagrammatic
curves in Fig. 7. Assume that CA and VB respectively represent a curve
model and a local vein curve, as shown in Fig. 7(a), we can clearly
observe that the separation between CA and VB gradually increase
towards their two ends. Although we can assign a suitable curve length
LP to locally fitting the shape of a candidate curve, there are still some
points away from the curve center to be necessarily devaluated in
venous region exploration.
Thus, it is obviously unreasonable that using the pixels correspond-
ing to ( A1, …, Ai ) and ( Am , …, An ) to respectively represent (B1, …, Bi ) and
(Bm, …, Bn ). Hence, a sub-curve of CA, indicated by window H in
Fig. 7(b), is actually more robust than the whole CA in representing
the shape of vein segment VB centered at P (x, y). However, it is still a
nontrivial task how to select a suitable sub-curve from CA, since the
curve lengths should vary with the vein diameters. This motivates us to
adopt a common way to make a curve CA more flexible.
Imaginably, replacing CA by a Gaussian-like curve CA, as shown in
(1) Fig. 7(b), is undoubtedly desirable for effectively weakening the
dissimilarities between a local vein curve and a curve model. Hence,
a SCF with a Gaussian-like curve can be obtained conveniently by
f mn (x, y) |LP × LP = f mn (x, y)|LP × LP ·Gmn (x, y)|LP × LP , (3)
where Gmn (x, y)|LP × LP is a 2D Gaussian-like model defined as
s2 ⎛ s 2 (x 2 + y 2 ) ⎞
Gmn (x, y)|LP × LP = exp ⎜ − ⎟,
2πLP2
⎝ 2LP2 ⎠ (4)
where s is a scale factor determining the 2D Gaussian shape. Here, for
(2)
weighted SCF (GWSCF). Some GWSCFs are listed in Fig. 8. Comparing
Fig. 8 with Fig. 5, we can clearly see that f mn (x, y) |LP × LP is more
reasonable than f mn (x, y)|LP × LP in vein information exploration.
From the above discussion, it should be noted that the properties of
f mn (x, y) |LP × LP are jointly determined by four parameters, κm, αn, s and
LP. Given a LP, we are able to make a GWSCF fitting a local curve best
by adjusting κm, αn and s. However, using GWSCFs with a fixed curve
length is undoubtedly unsuitable for venous region exploration, since
the diameters of vein vessels are changeable in biological tissues.
3.3. Curve length field estimation
In this section, a new scheme is reported to assign a suitable curve
length pixelwisely to each point in a finger-vein image. For estimating
finger veins. This method works well for estimating the widths of clear
veins, but it often fails for many low contrast veins. Here, a new
method is proposed for implementing finger-vein width estimation.
Then, the curvatures of cross-sectional profiles are computed over the
segmented image. For a given cross-sectional profile, some pairs of
local maximum curvatures (LMCs) with two up and down zero cross-
ings, as shown in Fig. 9(c), are detected sequentially, and the distance
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J. Yang et al. Pattern Recognition 66 (2017) 34–43

Fig. 4. A set of fixed-length curves with different curvatures and orientations. (a) 0°, (b) 45°, (c) 90°, (d) 135°, (e) 180°, (f) 225°, (g) 270°, (h) 315°.

Fig. 5. A set of spatial curve filters. Top: SCFs with same curvature and orientation but
different curve lengths. Middle: SCFs with same curve length and orientation but
different curvatures. Bottom: SCFs with same curvature and curve length but different
Fig. 7. A diagrammatic sketch for illustrating the spatial differences.
orientations.

Fig. 6. Spatial curve filter transformation. (a) A synthetic image. (b) The filtered result
using a SCF at 0°. (c) The filtered result using a SCF at 90°.

Fig. 8. Some Gaussian weighted spatial curve filters. Here, κm = 0.3,

between a pair of LMCs is viewed as a local width of a vein segment.
Considering the variations of veins in orientation, two cross-
sectional profiles in both horizontal and vertical directions are used
for local vein-width estimation, that is,
W (x, y) = min(Wh (x, y), Wv (x, y)),
where Wh (x, y) and Wv (x, y) respectively represent the horizontal and
vertical vein widths at a point (x,y), some vein width results are
illustrated in Fig. 10. Compared Fig. 10(e) with Fig. 10(f), it is clear
that the proposed method is more desirable than that in [11] for vein-
width estimation.
Following the vein width computation, a vein-width assignment
strategy should be established reasonably since the locations of pixels
αn = nπ /4, n = 0, 1, …, 7 .
vary in venous regions. For understanding this concern intuitively,
Fig. 11(a) is used here for illustrating the proposed vein-width assign-
ment strategy (VWAS). Assume that W denotes a vein width, and Pi, j is
(5)
a center point, as shown in Fig. 11(a), except for Pi, j , assigning W to any
other points in ith row, i.e. Pi, j −1 and Pi, j +1, as a curve length LP, is not
satisfactory because there always are some points in LP out of venous
region. Hence, the proposed VWAS is defined as
⎢ 2(W − 3) ⎥
ℓ(Pi, j ± k ) = ⎢W − k ⎥,
⎣ W ⎦ (6)
where the operator ⌊·⌋ expresses as a floor function, and k = 0, 1, 2 , ⋯,

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J. Yang et al. Pattern Recognition 66 (2017) 34–43

Fig. 9. Vein-width estimation. (a) An original image. (b) Adaptive finger-vein segmentation. (c) The curvature of a cross-sectional profile corresponding to a dark line in (b).

K. Here K is a round number of W /2 , and ℓ(Pi, j ± k ) is a half of a curve W

length. The proposed VWAS can make sure that the half-curve lengths
corresponding to the points outside the venous regions must be less
than three.
Considering that many thin vein vessels are often corrupted by
p p p
noises after finger-vein segmentation, the vein widths corresponding to
the points outside finger-vein regions are all valued to three, as
illustrated in Fig. 11(b), (c) and (d). Certainly, in this way, the assigned
vein widths corresponding to the background points are also three. (a)
Due to the symmetry of the curve models, as shown in Fig. 3, the
curve lengths are therefore chosen as

LP (x, y) = 2 × ℓ( pi, j ± n ) + 1. (7)

Thus, LP (x, y) actually describes a curve length field (CLF) correspond-

ing to a finger-vein image. In LP (x, y), the value of each point
represents a curve length related to its local attribute. It is obvious (b) ( c)
that under CLF constrain, the vein ridge information contained in a
finger-vein image can be exploited adaptively using the proposed SCFs
with adaptive window sizes.

3.4. Adaptive spatial curve transformation

(d)
In this section, we address the image filtering problem using the
obtained filters based on Eq. (3). Since the window sizes of GWSCFs Fig. 11. Vein-width assignment. (a) A schematic diagram of a vein with W width. Based
are variable and determined by curve length field L (x, y), the 2D on Eq. (6), (b), (c) and (d) respectively denote W is 5, 6 and 7.

convolution operation cannot be directly used for filtering an image.

Considering that all the values are zero except for a curve in a GWSCF, Umn (x, y)|LP × LP = ∑ (( f mn (x, y))|LP × LP ·I (x, y)|LP × LP ),
we define LP × LP (8)

Fig. 10. Vein width estimation result. (a) An original finger-vein image. (b)The used finger-vein segmentation result. (c) Wh (x, y). (d) Wv (x, y). (e) W (x, y) . (f) Vein width estimation
result using the method proposed in [11].

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J. Yang et al. Pattern Recognition 66 (2017) 34–43

Fig. 12. Orientation field estimation. (a) An original image. (b) The negative of (a). (c) ω (x, y) .(d) β (x, y). (e) Orientation field estimated by [24].

where Umn (x, y) represent the adaptive transform result, I (x, y) denotes problem based on VVF, since POC measure is sensitive to two vector
the negative version of I (x, y) and the symbol “·” denotes the product fields from different individuals. Assume that ⎯→ ⎯ν (x, y) and ⎯→
1
⎯ν (x, y) are
2
operator. Using I (x, y) to substitute I (x, y) arises from that the veins two VVFs, and F1 (u , v ) and F2 (u , v ) represent their 2D DFT, according
appear dark curves in the original imageries. to the property of Fourier transform, that is,
Assume that P (x, y) is a point in I (x, y), Umn (x, y) must be maximum ⎯→
⎯ν (x, y)○⎯→
⎯ν (x, y)⟺F (u , v ) F (u , v ),
(11)
in a local LP × LP block when αn and κm simultaneously and locally 1 2 1 2

match the orientation and the curvature of a finger-vein ridge at point where “○” denotes a 2D correlation operator, we can compute the cross
P (x, y). Therefore, we define phase spectrum as
⎧ ω (x, y) = max Umn (x, y)|LP × LP F1 (u , v ) F2 (u , v )
⎪ αm, κn R (u , v ) =

= e j θ (u , v ) .
⎨ n , ∥ F1 (u , v ) F2 (u , v )∥ (12)
⎪ β (x, y) = arg max Um (x, y)|LP × LP
⎩ αm ∈[0,2π ) (9)
Let r (x, y) = IDFT(R (u , v )), thus, r (x, y) is a POC function or measure.
where ω (x, y) represents the maximum value of all filtered results of The POC measure has a sharp peak when two VVFs are similar,
P (x, y), and β (x, y) denotes an orientation field corresponding to whereas it will be near zero for those from different classes, as shown in
ω (x, y). Some results are shown in Fig. 12. Fig. 14. Moreover, POC measure is insensitive to image shift and
Imaginably, for a given finger-vein ridge, β (x, y) is more reliable noises. Detailed description about POC can be found in [25,26].
than ω (x, y) in vein course description, and ω (x, y) is more discrimi-
native than β (x, y) in vein network variation. This is because pixels 5. Experiments
with different vein-width values may be similar in β (x, y) but different
in ω (x, y), as shown in Fig. 11(b), (c) and (d). Here, an image database containing 2040 finger-vein images from
Hence, ω (x, y) together with β (x, y) is desirable for finger-vein 68 individuals is used for performance testing. In this database, each
primitive information representation. Based on this consideration, we individual contributes 30 forefinger-vein images of the right hand. All
define images are 8-bit gray images with a resolution of 320×240, and
→ captured using a homemade image acquisition system at different
ν (x, y) = ω (x, y) e−j β (x, y), (10)
sessions, as shown in Fig. 1.
where j = −1 , and → ν (x, y) is called a vein vector field (VVF)
estimated from a finger-vein image. Some VVFs are shown in Fig. 13. 5.1. SCF transform testing

4. Vein vector field matching In this section, we do some experiments to straightforwardly

visualize the transformation results. Here, some binary images with
In this section, the Phase-Only-Correlation (POC) measure pro- ideal curves are used for testing, which aims at illustrating that 1)
posed in [25] is simply used for handling the finger-vein matching GWSCF is better than SCF in curve representation; 2) Curve length

Fig. 13. Vein vector field estimation. Left: The proposed method. Right: Estimation result by [24]. The two close-up images respectively corresponding to the left and the right.

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J. Yang et al. Pattern Recognition 66 (2017) 34–43

Fig. 14. POC measure. Left: r (x, y) of two same finger-vein images. Right: r (x, y) of two finger-vein images from different classes.

estimation is indispensable for accurately describing the vector features

of curves varying in width.
In order to clearly illustrate the differences between SCF and
GWSCF, we use an image shown in Fig. 6 for testing. The spatial
curve filters used here are same in curve length and curvature but
different in orientation. Fig. 15 lists some transform results.
Comparing Fig. 15(b) with Fig. 15(c), we can clearly see that the
SCFs without weighting can distort a curve seriously after transform. Fig. 16. Transform result using GWSCFs. (a) An original binary image with different
This shows that the pixels near to the two ends of a curve also curves. (b) ℓ = 4 . (c) ℓ = 6 . (d) ℓ = 8 . Here, κ = 0.2 , α = kπ /4, k = 0, 1, …, 7, s=6.
contribute much to the final transform result. After Gaussian weight-
ing, the pixels away for the center are naturally devaluated in transform
operation. So, the proposed Gaussian weighting scheme is beneficial for
making SCFs more effective in curve information exploration.
Noticeably, the performance of GWSCFs is yet affected by curve
length LP since the widths of curves are variable in the real situation.
To illustrate this straightforwardly, we use a binary image, as shown in
Fig. 16(a), with different curves varying in width and curvature for
testing. From Fig. 16(b) to (d), we can observe that the degree of curve
distortion after transform is directly proportional to curve length LP.
So estimating the curve widths properly is of advantage to make
GWSCFs perform best in curve information extraction.
Moreover, the performance of GWSCFs should be further validated
using some real images since the above used images are after all ideal
in curve representation. Here, two images with high quality in curve
imaging are used for testing, as shown in Fig. 17(a). The top image in
Fig. 17(a) is a x-ray image of a part of human vessels. The bottom
image in Fig. 17(a) is a lightning image whose lightning ridges are
similar to the finger-vein ridges in shape and orientation.
Fig. 17. Transform results of some real images similar to high quality finger-vein images
From Fig. 17(c), we can clearly see that GWSCFs are powerful in in ridge shapes. (a) Two original images. (b) The transform results by SCFs. (c) The
preserving the original properties of ridges as well as enhancing them transform results by GWSCFs. Here, ℓ = 4κ = 0.2 , α = kπ /4, k = 0, 1, …, 7, s=6.
effectively. Compared with GWSCFs, SCFs are obviously inferior in
ridge description, as shown in Fig. 17(b). Hence, the proposed 5.2. Gaussian scale selection
Gaussian weighting scheme is very necessary in improving the perfor-
mance of the proposed spatial curve filter. The above experimental results clearly illustrate that the proposed
method is effective indeed in curve information exploitation. However,
it is also apparent that GWSCFs cannot output optimal results if the
scale of Gaussian function is not valued properly. In this section, we
discuss this issue in detail.
The shape of 2D Gaussian function should be modeled reasonably
in order to make SCFs weighted properly. From Eq. (4), we can see that
the 2D Gaussian shape is only determined by the scale factor s for a
given LP. Hence, the 2D Gaussian function expressed by Eq. (4) is
actually adaptive in weighting SCFs since LP is variable according to
Eq. (7). Thus, for a given s, the Gaussian shapes can vary automatically
with LP. Here, we first give an intuitive observation, and then report a
Fig. 15. Transform result comparison. (a) An original binary image with an ellipse. (b)
Transform result ω (x, y) using SCFs. (c) Transform result ω (x, y) using GWSCFs. Here, statistical analysis.
ℓ = 5, κ = 0.2 , α = kπ /4, k = 0, 1, …, 7, s=6. In Fig. 18, we list some Gaussian distributions and GWSCFs varying

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J. Yang et al. Pattern Recognition 66 (2017) 34–43

Fig. 18. Curve length variation. Top: LP=5. Middle: LP=9. Bottom: LP=13. Here, s=3, κ = 0.2 , α = kπ /4, k = 0, 1, …, 7.

in LP but fixed in s(=3). According to Eq. (4), the variances of Gaussian

functions vary with LP /3. So they are proportional geometrically in scale
space, as shown in the left column of Fig. 18, though the curve lengths
are different. This can actually ensure a steady weighting scheme for
SCFs different in size. From Fig. 18, we can also clearly observe that the
capabilities of GWSCFs in curve representation vary with curve length
LP though they are same in curvature κ. This shows that the original
shapes of SCFs are not destroyed by Gaussian weighting.
Instead, the shapes of SCFs can be apparently changed if the scale
factor s is variable. For illustration, in Fig. 19, we list some Gaussian
distributions and GWSCFs varying in s but fixed in LP. Fig. 19 clearly
shows that the pixels away from the centers of SCFs can be gradually
attenuated by Gaussian weights when increasing s value. This causes
GWSCFs to lose the capabilities of curve description inherent in the
original SCFs. Compared GWSCFs in the bottom of Fig. 19 with those
Fig. 20. ROC curves of finger-vein vector fields at different s.
in the top of Fig. 18, we can deduce that the transformation results
might be same. However, the former must be higher than the later in
reliable finger-vein vector field extraction.
computational cost since the window size of the former is bigger.
Let s=3, under LP (x, y) constrains, by tuning orientation αm and
Hence, for a set of SCFs different in curvature and curve length,
curvature κn, we can also obtain ω (x, y) of finger-vein images based on
selecting proper Gaussian distributions for weighting is crucial for
Eq. (9), as shown in Fig. 21.
reliable curve information exploration in real applications.
From Fig. 21, we can see that the proposed method is powerful in
Unfortunately, the optimal parameter s cannot be determined by
exploiting the finger-vein networks. Therefore, the extracted VVFs
visual comparison. It is sure that, however, parameter s must affect the
based on Eq. (10) are capable of representing the network features of
similarities between different vector fields. Hence, in order to obtain
finger veins.
the optimum s in a statistical manner, we extract a subset of finger-vein
images for testing. The used subset contained 300 finger-vein images
from 30 different fingers, each finger contributes 10 finger-vein images. 5.3. Finger-vein vector field matching results
2
The number of genuine attempts is 1,350 (30C10 ), and the number of
2
impostor attempts is 43,500 (10 × 10C30 ). The ROC curves of ω (x, y), For finger-vein matching on this database, the number of genuine
β (x, y) and →ν (x, y) at different s are plotted respectively in Fig. 20. attempts is 29,580 (68C30 2
), and the number of impostor attempts is
From Fig. 20, we can see the Gaussian function with s=3 can contribute 2
2,050,200 (30 × 30C68 ). By respectively using the original images,
the lowest EER. Hence, making s=3 satisfying should be optimum for ω (x, y) images, β (x, y) images and → ν (x, y) fields for finger-vein match-

Fig. 19. Gaussian scale variation. Top: s=2. Middle: s=3. Bottom: s=4. Here, LP=9, κ = 0.2 , α = kπ /4, k = 0, 1, …, 7.

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J. Yang et al. Pattern Recognition 66 (2017) 34–43

Fig. 21. Transform results of some finger-vein images. Here, α = kπ /4, k = 0, 1, …, 7, and s=3.

Fig. 23. ROC curves of different methods.

Fig. 22. ROC curves of different feature fields.

ing under POC measure, the ROC (receiver operating characteristic)

curves are plotted in Fig. 22, where false non-match rates (FNMR) and
false match rates (FMR) are shown in the same plot at different
thresholds on the POC matching score, and EER (equal error rate) is
the error rate where FNMR and FMR are equal. From Fig. 22, we can
clearly see that VVFs have the best performance of ROC curves and
make the lowest EER. It indicates that ω (x, y) oriented by β (x, y) is
powerful in describing the inter-class discriminability of finger-vein
images.
For comparison with other classical methods, we first realize these
finger-vein information exploited methods, for example, wavelet-based
method proposed in [12], orientation-based method proposed in [24],
repeated-line based method proposed in [10]; The same POC measure
is then used for finger-vein feature image matching. The ROC curves of
different methods are plotted in Fig. 23.
For finger-vein vector field extraction, we have proposed a method Fig. 24. ROC curves of two methods.
based on SCFs in [28]. This method is not satisfying in curve length
field estimation, and Gaussian weighting scheme is not introduced. vein recognition performance.
Here, the comparison between the method in [28] and the proposed
method is demonstrated in Fig. 24.
From Figs. 23 and 24, we can clearly see that VVFs can make the 6. Conclusions
lowest EER. This shows that 1) the proposed SCFs are capable of fitting
the real variations of finger-vein shapes, 2) the proposed Gaussian In this paper, a new finger-vein vector field estimation method has
weighting scheme is reliable in improving the capabilities of SCFs, 3) been proposed for improving the finger-vein matching performance.
the extracted finger-vein vector fields are higher in discriminability. Considering the variations of finger veins in orientation and shape, a
Hence, the proposed method is reliable for highly improving finger- set of SCFs were first constructed using a curve model variable in

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curvature and orientation. To make SCFs adaptive to the variations of
veins in diameter, we then proposed a new method to estimate a curve
length field (CLF). Since the proposed curve model is still inflexible in
shape though its curvature is changeable, a Gaussian weighting scheme
was proposed. With the CLF constrain, we proposed an adaptive spatial
curve transform for finger-vein ridge information extraction. Based the
proposed transform, we used vein vector fields (VVFs) for finger-vein
feature presentation. Experimental results demonstrated that the
proposed method was highly powerful in improving finger-vein match-
ing accuracy.
Acknowledgement
This research work is jointly supported by National Natural Science
Foundation of China (No. 61379102, No. U1343120, No. 61502498).
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Jinfeng Yang is currently a Professor at Civil Aviation University of China. He received
the PhD degree in Pattern Recognition and Intelligent System from the National
Laboratory of Pattern Recognition (NLPR), Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy
of Sciences (CAS), China, in 2005. Msc (2001) and Bsc(1994) respectively from
Zhengzhou University and Zhengzhou University of light industry, China. His major
research interests include machine learning, pattern recognition, computer vision,
multimedia processing, and data mining. He regularly served as PC members/referees
for international journals and top conferences, including, IEEE TIP, IVC, PR, PRL, ICCV,
CVPR, ECCV, etc. He is a member of IEEE. He currently serves as syndic of the Chinese
Society of Image and Graphics, syndic of the Chinese Association for Artificial
Intelligence.