Patent ID: 8320997

Claim:
A vein authentication apparatus comprising: a light source unit for emitting a near infrared light having a predetermined wavelength to a surface of a finger rotating on its axis in a longitudinal direction; an imaging unit for imaging the finger surface, to which the near infrared light is emitted, at a predetermined time interval, and for generating a plurality of vein image data whose imaging ranges are different from each other; a vein pattern extraction unit for extracting a vein pattern from each of the plurality of vein image data; a rotational amount calculation unit for calculating a rotational direction and an amount of rotation of the finger associated with the rotational movement for each of the extracted vein patterns by using an imaging range of one of the vein patterns as a reference; a registration information selection unit for: calculating a shift width of the imaging range on the basis of the rotational direction and the amount of rotation, determining whether the shift width of the imaging range is equal to or more than a predetermined threshold value, selecting a vein pattern to be registered as a template from among the plurality of vein patterns when the shift width of the imaging range is less than the predetermined threshold value, and setting the selected vein pattern as registration information; and a registration information compression unit for compressing, in accordance with the shift width of the imaging range, selected registration information when the shift width of the imaging range is equal to or more than the predetermined threshold value.