Patent ID: 8560316

Claim:
A method for use in speaker recognition for providing an accept or reject verification decision, with a specified confidence level, from a minimal duration of speech, said duration comprising one or more frames, said method including the steps of: gathering a speech sample from a speaker for a frame; estimating a verification score for said sample; determining confidence measures for accept and reject decisions for said verification score at a specified verification threshold wherein the step of determining confidence measures further includes: (i). estimating the probability density distribution of the estimated verification score; (ii). calculating the confidence of an accept verification decision as the proportion of the estimated probability density that is above the specified verification threshold; making an accept decision if the calculated confidence of an accept decision equals or exceeds the specified confidence level and terminating any further gathering of speech; (iii). calculating the confidence of a reject verification decision as the proportion of the estimated probability density that is below the specified verification threshold; making a reject decision if the calculated confidence of the reject decision is below the specified confidence level and terminating any further gathering of speech; and repeating the previous steps for one or more frames until a verification decision has been made, whereby the speech samples for the one or more frames are accumulated to improve the accuracy and/or quality of the estimated probability density distribution of the verification score.