Patent ID: 8331629

Claim:
A personal authentication apparatus comprising: a plurality of light sources each of which emits infrared light; an input interface which includes an imaging unit for imaging an image of a blood vessel of a finger of a living body by the infrared light emitted from the plurality of light sources; an image calculating unit which performs a feature extracting operation and a feature authenticating operation with respect to the photographed image of the blood vessel; a positioning unit for presenting the finger; and a control unit which controls at least the plurality of light sources, wherein a presentation position of the finger is set to a position higher than the imaging unit; the plurality light sources are installed at positions which are deeper than the presentation position of the finger and also are higher than the presentation position of the finger; and the control unit controls amounts of infrared light emitted from the plurality light sources according to illumination positions of the infrared light emitted from the plurality light sources on the finger, respectively.