Patent ID: 8831298

Claim:
A method for identifying a person holding an object with a hand, wherein the object comprises an image capture device and a transmitter, the method comprising: providing a remote processing device comprising a receiver and a database, wherein the transmitter of the object and said receiver of said remote processing device are in communication and wherein said remote processing device and the object are physically separate; capturing an image of at least a portion of the hand, said portion of the hand comprising at least a portion of the hand between a metacarpophalangeal joint and a distal interphalangeal joint of one or more fingers, said image featuring only a skin surface print; sending said image with said transmitter to said receiver; constructing a signature from data from said image by said remote processing device, said constructing said signature comprising converting said image to luminance levels to form a luminance matrix and converting said luminance matrix to form a vector through a lossy conversion process, wherein said signature comprises said vector, and said converting said luminance matrix to said vector comprises: dividing said luminance matrix into a plurality of blocks each of N by N pixels, wherein N refers to a number of pixels in each row and in each column of each block of said luminance matrix; and applying said lossy conversion process to at least some of said plurality of blocks, said lossy conversion process comprising a transform selected from the group consisting of a DCT (discrete cosine transform) transform, and a DFT (discrete Fourier transform), and also comprising applying a filter after applying said transform, said applying said filter comprising multiplying by a power vertical vector; and searching through said database for a matching signature to said Signature obtained from said image to identify the person.