Patent Document

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION 
       [0001]    This application is based upon and claims the benefit of priority of the prior Japanese Patent Application No. 2016-106534, filed on May 27, 2016, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference. 
       FIELD 
       [0002]    A certain aspect of embodiments described herein relates to a biometric information processing device, a biometric information processing method and a non-transitory computer-readable recording medium. 
       BACKGROUND 
       [0003]    In vein authentication, an appropriate vein image is easily obtained by stabilizing the posture of a region of a living body with a guide. Recently, a vein authentication function is installed in a portable device, but the use of the device along with the guide loses portability. It is therefore hoped that the authentication is carried out by a movement that naturally holds the region of the living body over the portable device. However, it is difficult to stabilize a position of the region of the living body against a sensor, and hence a photographing range and a photographing point vary for each photographing. For this reason, it is considered that a vein pattern of the whole regions of the living body is enrolled, a part of the whole regions is photographed at the time of comparison and the comparison (partial authentication) of the part of the whole regions is performed (see Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2012-234440). 
       SUMMARY 
       [0004]    According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a biometric information processing device including: a memory; a processor coupled to the memory and the processor configured to: extract a surface pattern and a blood vessel pattern of a living body from a biometric image; extract a feature point of the surface pattern; and extract a feature of the blood vessel pattern corresponding to a position of the feature point. 
         [0005]    The object and advantages of the invention will be realized and attained by means of the elements and combinations particularly pointed out in the claims. It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory and are not restrictive of the invention, as claimed. 
     
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS 
         [0006]      FIG. 1A  is a block diagram illustrating the hardware configuration of a biometric authentication device according to a first embodiment; 
           [0007]      FIG. 1B  is a schematic diagram of a biometric sensor; 
           [0008]      FIG. 2  is a block diagram of respective functions achieved by the execution of a biometric authentication program; 
           [0009]      FIG. 3  is a flowchart illustrating details of enrollment processing; 
           [0010]      FIG. 4  is a flowchart illustrating the detail of step S 3  in  FIG. 3 ; 
           [0011]      FIG. 5  is a diagram illustrating feature points and local regions extracted from a palm image; 
           [0012]      FIG. 6  is a flowchart illustrating details of authentication processing; 
           [0013]      FIG. 7  is a diagram illustrating the feature points and the local regions extracted from a finger image; and 
           [0014]      FIG. 8  is a diagram illustrating the feature points and the local regions extracted from a face image. 
       
    
    
     DESCRIPTION OF EMBODIMENTS 
       [0015]    It is considered that, in the vein authentication, the vein pattern has no information which become a clue of its position, and therefore the position of the vein pattern is estimated from an outline of the biometric portion. However, outline information cannot be used by the partial authentication, so that a comparison region cannot be decided promptly. It is considered to scan a partial pattern on a whole pattern of the region of the living body, find a corresponding position and perform the comparison. However, a processing time increases by scanning the whole pattern. 
         [0016]    Hereinafter, a description will be given of an embodiment with reference to drawings. 
       First Embodiment 
       [0017]      FIG. 1A  is a block diagram illustrating the hardware configuration of a biometric authentication device  100  according to a first embodiment.  FIG. 1B  is a schematic diagram of a biometric sensor  105  mentioned later. With reference to  FIG. 1A , the biometric authentication device  100  includes a CPU  101 , a RAM  102 , a storage  103 , a display  104 , a biometric sensor  105 , a communication unit  106 , an attribute information acquisition unit  107 , and so on. These components are connected to each other via a bus. 
         [0018]    The CPU  101  is a central processing unit. The CPU  101  includes one or more cores. The RAM (Random Access Memory)  102  is a volatile memory that temporarily stores programs which the CPU  101  executes, and data which the CPU  101  processes. 
         [0019]    The storage  103  is a nonvolatile storage. For example, a ROM (Read Only Memory), a SSD (Solid State Drive) such as a flash memory, and a hard disk driven by a hard disk drive can be used as the storage  103 . A biometric authentication program according to the present embodiment is stored into the storage  103 . The display  104  is a liquid crystal display, an electroluminescent panel or the like, and displays a result of each processing mentioned later. 
         [0020]    The biometric sensor  105  is a sensor for acquiring biometric information of a user, and acquires a palm image of the user in a non-contact manner in the present embodiment. As illustrated in  FIG. 1B , the biometric sensor  105  is a CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) camera as an example. The biometric sensor  105  can acquire a surface pattern such as wrinkles of the palm based on information of a visible light or a near-infrared ray, for example. Further, the biometric sensor  105  can acquire a blood vessel pattern such as a vein pattern with the use of the near-infrared ray. The palm image preferably includes the whole of the palm including a finger-tip, but may include only a range from a wrist to the middle of the finger. 
         [0021]    The communication unit  106  is a connection interface to a LAN (Local Area Network), for example. The attribute information acquisition unit  107  is an input device such as a keyboard or a mouse, and is used to input an ID or a user name and a password for identifying a user, for example. 
         [0022]    The biometric authentication program stored into the storage  103  is executably developed in the RAM  102 . The CPU  101  executes the biometric authentication program developed in the RAM  102 . Thereby, each processing is performed by the biometric authentication device  100 . By executing the biometric authentication program, enrollment processing and authentication processing are performed. 
         [0023]    In the enrollment processing, a feature acquired from the palm image acquired by the biometric sensor  105  is associated with each user, and the feature associated with each user is enrolled in a database. In the present embodiment, the blood vessel pattern extracted from the palm image is enrolled in the database as the feature. In the authentication processing, a comparison feature acquired by the biometric sensor  105  is compared with an enrollment feature enrolled in the database. In the present embodiment, when a similarity degree between the vein pattern acquired at the time of the authentication processing and the vein pattern enrolled in the database is equal to or more than a threshold value as an example, it is determined that the user is the same as an enrolled user. The details of the enrollment processing and the authentication processing are mentioned later. 
         [0024]      FIG. 2  is a block diagram of respective functions achieved by the execution of the biometric authentication program. An extraction unit  10 , an enrollment unit  20 , an authentication unit  30  and a database  40  are achieved by the execution of the biometric authentication program. The extraction unit  10  includes a function as a biometric information processing device. Therefore, a program achieving the extraction unit  10  included in the biometric authentication program includes a function as a biometric information processing program. The extraction unit  10  includes a blood vessel pattern extraction unit  11 , a surface pattern extraction unit  12 , a feature point extraction unit  13 , a local region setting unit  14  and a feature extraction unit  15 . In the example of  FIGS. 1A, 1B and 2 , the biometric authentication device  100  is a stand-alone terminal, but not limited to this. In the present embodiment, the biometric authentication device  100  is also applicable to a client-server system, for example. In the present embodiment, a description will be given of an example of the stand-alone terminal for convenience of explanation. 
         [0025]    (Enrollment Processing)  FIG. 3  is a flowchart illustrating details of the enrollment processing. Hereinafter, a description will be given of the enrollment processing with reference to  FIGS. 2 and 3 . First, the attribute information acquisition unit  107  acquires attribute information of the user (step S 1 ). Next, the biometric sensor  105  acquires the palm image of the user that holds a hand over the biometric sensor  105  (step S 2 ). Next, the extraction unit  10  extracts the vein pattern as the feature from the palm image (step S 3 ). Next, the enrollment unit  20  associates the attribute information acquired at step S 1  with the feature extracted at step S 3 , and enrolls the attribute information and the feature in the database  40  (step S 4 ). The feature enrolled at step S 4  is referred to as the enrollment feature. By the above-mentioned processing, the enrollment processing is completed. 
         [0026]      FIG. 4  is a flowchart illustrating the detail of step S 3  in  FIG. 3 . As illustrated in  FIG. 4 , the surface pattern extraction unit  12  extracts information reflected at the surface of the palm from the palm image acquired at step S 2  to extract the surface pattern of the palm (step S 11 ).  FIG. 5  illustrates the palm image acquired at step S 2  and the surface pattern extracted from the palm image. 
         [0027]    Next, the feature point extraction unit  13  extracts positions of intersection points and end points of characteristic lines included in the surface pattern extracted at step S 11  as feature points (step S 12 ). As illustrated in  FIG. 5 , in the extracted surface pattern, unevenness of the surface is expressed as a two-dimensional image. Therefore, in the two-dimensional image, places far from the biometric sensor  105  are displayed blackly and near places are displayed whitely. The feature point extraction unit  13  performs binarization processing for the two-dimensional image to extract places (a wrinkle region of the surface) becoming black locally. The feature point extraction unit  13  thins images acquired by the binarization processing to generate line images each having a width of 1 px (pixel), and extracts the positions of the intersection points and the end points of the line images as the feature points. The feature points to be extracted are not only the intersection points and the end points, and may be singular points in which a curvature of each extracted thin line is large. Moreover, the feature point extraction unit  13  may store not only the positions of the feature points but also information on types and directions, as information on the feature points. 
         [0028]    Next, the local region setting unit  14  sets a local region to extract the feature based on each of the feature points extracted at step S 12  (step S 13 ). For example, the local region setting unit  14  sets a square region where a length of one side is “W” and the extracted feature point is put on the center, as the local region. For example, the length of “W” is around 10-20% of a size of the palm image. The local region is a region set to extract the feature from the vein pattern, but not a region based on the vein pattern. Therefore, the vein pattern having enough information might not exist in the local region. In this case, there is few feature to be extracted and there is a possibility that a discriminative performance enough for the authentication cannot be expected. For this reason, the local region setting unit  14  counts pixels of the vein pattern included in the image representing the vein pattern corresponding to the square region where the feature point is put on the center, and calculates an existence ratio of the vein in the local region. When the existence ratio of the vein is equal to or more than a threshold value, the local region setting unit  14  adopts the square region as the local region for extracting the feature. When the existence ratio of the vein is less than the threshold value, the local region setting unit  14  does not adopt the square region as the local region. The local region setting unit  14  assigns a feature point ID as an identifier of each local region. 
         [0029]    On the contrary, the blood vessel pattern extraction unit  11  extracts the vein pattern from the palm image acquired at step S 2  (step S 21 ). In  FIG. 5 , the extracted vein pattern is illustrated. The feature extraction unit  15  extracts the feature from a local image of the vein pattern corresponding to the local region set at step S 13  (step S 22 ). The feature can be extracted with the use of a general image recognition technique. For example, a statistical feature (a mean, a dispersion and so on of pixel values) in the local image of the vein pattern, Local Binary Pattern (LBP), SIFT/SURF, ORB, BRISK, D-Nets, KAZE or a technique using the combination thereof can be used. The feature extraction unit  15  associates a feature point coordinate and the feature (vector) with the feature point ID, as illustrated in  FIG. 5 . 
         [0030]    (Authentication Processing) Next, a description will be given of the authentication processing.  FIG. 6  is a flowchart illustrating details of the authentication processing. As illustrated in  FIG. 6 , steps S 31  to S 33  are the same as steps S 1  to S 3  of  FIG. 3 . The feature acquired at step S 33  is referred to as the comparison feature. After the execution of step S 33 , the authentication unit  30  reads out the enrollment feature identical with the attribute information acquired at step S 31  from the database  40  (step S 34 ). 
         [0031]    Next, the authentication unit  30  calculates a similarity degree between the enrollment feature read out at step S 34  and the comparison feature, as a comparison score (step S 35 ). For example, the authentication unit  30  sequentially calculates a similarity degree between a feature included in the comparison feature and each feature included in the enrollment feature, and calculates a maximum similarity degree as a similarity degree of the feature included in the comparison feature. The authentication unit  30  calculates a similarity degree with respect to another feature included in the comparison feature in the same way. The authentication unit  30  calculates an average of the acquired similarity degrees as the comparison score. Alternatively, the authentication unit  30  may use geometric information that a group of feature points has. Specifically, the authentication unit  30  calculates a relative position relation of each feature point with the use of the coordinates of the feature points. The authentication unit  30  compares the relative position relation of each feature point of the comparison feature with the relative position relation of each feature point of the enrollment feature, which make it possible to acquire a corresponding relation between both feature points. By comparing the feature of the feature point included in the comparison feature with the feature of a corresponding feature point included in the enrollment feature, it is possible to reduce a calculation amount. 
         [0032]    The authentication unit  30  determines whether the comparison score exceeds a threshold Th (step S 36 ). When the determination of step S 36  is YES, the authentication unit  30  outputs a signal indicative of authentication success (step S 37 ). When the determination of step S 36  is NO, the authentication unit  30  outputs a signal indicative of authentication failure (step S 38 ). After the execution of steps S 37  and S 38 , the execution of the flowchart is completed. 
         [0033]    According to the present embodiment, the feature point of the surface pattern is used as information for setting the local region smaller than the palm image. The blood vessel pattern has few feature points such as the intersection points and the end points of the characteristic lines, and hence it is hard to extract the feature points which become a clue of its position. On the contrary, many intersection points and many end points of the characteristic lines are included in the surface pattern. Therefore, the setting of the local region is facilitated by using the surface pattern. The feature is extracted from the blood vessel pattern every local regions. The feature of each local region enrolled at the time of the enrollment processing is compared with the feature of each local region extracted at the time of the authentication processing. This method does not need to scan the partial pattern for comparison from the whole palm image, so that a time necessary for deciding a region used for comparison is shortened. As described above, according to the present embodiment, it is possible to acquire the biometric information to be used for partial authentication at high speed. 
         [0034]    The present embodiment explains one-on-one authentication that specifies the enrollment feature of a comparison object by acquiring the attribute information at the time of the authentication processing, but the present embodiment is not limited to this. The present embodiment can be applied to one-to-many authentication that compares the comparison feature with a plurality of enrollment features without acquiring the attribute information at the time of the authentication processing. The same applies to the following examples. 
         [0035]    (Variation 1) The feature can be extracted from the blood vessel pattern of a finger other than the blood vessel pattern of the palm, for example.  FIG. 7  is a diagram illustrating a finger image of any one of fingers acquired by the biometric sensor  105 . The surface pattern extraction unit  12  extracts information reflected at the surface of the finger from the acquired finger image to extract the surface pattern of the finger. Moreover, in  FIG. 7 , the extracted surface pattern is illustrated. The surface pattern is wrinkles of a joint of the finger. 
         [0036]    The feature point extraction unit  13  extracts positions of intersection points and end points of characteristic lines included in the extracted surface pattern, as the feature points. As illustrated in  FIG. 7 , in the extracted surface pattern, unevenness of the surface is expressed as the two-dimensional image. Therefore, in the two-dimensional image, places far from the biometric sensor  105  are displayed blackly and near places are displayed whitely. The feature point extraction unit  13  performs binarization processing for the two-dimensional image to extract places (the wrinkle region of the surface) becoming black locally. The feature point extraction unit  13  thins images acquired by the binarization processing to generate line images each having a width of 1 px (pixel), and extracts the positions of the intersection points and the end points of the line images as the feature points. The feature points to be extracted are not only the intersection points and the end points, and may be singular points in which a curvature of each extracted thin line is large. Moreover, the feature point extraction unit  13  may store not only the positions of the feature points but also information on types and directions, as information on the feature points. 
         [0037]    The local region setting unit  14  sets the local region to extract the feature based on each of the extracted feature points. For example, the local region setting unit  14  sets the square region where the length of one side is “W” and the extracted feature point is put on the center, as the local region. For example, the length of “W” is around 10-20% of an image size. The local region setting unit  14  counts the pixels of the blood vessel pattern included in the image representing the blood vessel pattern corresponding to the square region where the feature point is put on the center, and calculates the existence ratio of the blood vessel in the local region. When the existence ratio of the blood vessel is equal to or more than the threshold value, the local region setting unit  14  adopts the square region as the local region for extracting the feature. When the existence ratio of the vein is less than the threshold value, the local region setting unit  14  does not adopt the square region as the local region. The local region setting unit  14  assigns the feature point ID as the identifier of each local region. 
         [0038]    The blood vessel pattern extraction unit  11  extracts the blood vessel pattern from the finger image. In  FIG. 7 , the vein pattern is illustrated as the blood vessel pattern. The feature extraction unit  15  extracts the feature from the local image of the blood vessel pattern corresponding to the set local region, as illustrated in  FIG. 7 . The feature extraction unit  15  associates the feature point coordinate and the feature (vector) with the feature point ID, as illustrated in  FIG. 7 . 
         [0039]    (Variation 2) Alternatively, the feature can be extracted from the blood vessel pattern of a face.  FIG. 8  is a diagram illustrating a face image acquired by the biometric sensor  105 . The surface pattern extraction unit  12  extracts information reflected at the surface of the face from the acquired face image to extract the surface pattern of the face. Moreover, in  FIG. 8 , the extracted surface pattern is illustrated. The surface pattern is outlines such as eyes, a nose and a mouth. 
         [0040]    The feature point extraction unit  13  extracts the positions of characteristic points included in the extracted surface pattern, as the feature points. For example, as illustrated in  FIG. 8 , the feature point extraction unit  13  can extract points on the outlines such as the eyes, the nose and the mouth in which a curvature is equal to or more than a threshold value, as the feature points. As a technique to extract the outlines such as the eyes, the nose and the mouth, a Laplacian filter or Canny edge detection can be used. For example, the feature points of the face can be detected by performing machine learning of the local image of the corresponding position beforehand. For example, a method described in “Yi Sun et al., “Deep Convolutional Network Cascade for Facial Point Detection”, In Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), pp. 3476-3483, 2013” can be used. 
         [0041]    The local region setting unit  14  sets the local region to extract the feature based on each of the extracted feature points. For example, the local region setting unit  14  sets the square region where the length of one side is “W” and the extracted feature point is put on the center, as the local region. For example, the length of “W” is around 10-20% of an image size. The local region setting unit  14  counts the pixels of the blood vessel pattern included in the image representing the blood vessel pattern corresponding to the square region where the feature point is put on the center, and calculates the existence ratio of the blood vessel in the local region. When the existence ratio of the blood vessel is equal to or more than the threshold value, the local region setting unit  14  adopts the square region as the local region for extracting the feature. When the existence ratio of the vein is less than the threshold value, the local region setting unit  14  does not adopt the square region as the local region. The local region setting unit  14  assigns the feature point ID as the identifier of each local region. 
         [0042]    The blood vessel pattern extraction unit  11  extracts the blood vessel pattern from the face image. In  FIG. 8 , the vein pattern extracted as the blood vessel pattern is illustrated. The feature extraction unit  15  extracts the feature from the local image of the blood vessel pattern corresponding to the set local region, as illustrated in  FIG. 8 . The feature can be extracted with the use of the general image recognition technique. The feature extraction unit  15  associates the feature point coordinate and the feature (vector) with the feature point ID, as illustrated in  FIG. 8 . 
         [0043]    (Variation 3) In each example mentioned above, the feature is extracted from the blood vessel pattern. Moreover, the feature may be extracted from the surface pattern. For example, the feature extraction unit  15  extracts the feature from the surface pattern in the local region. The coordinate and the direction of the end points and branch points included in the wrinkles of the palm or the wrinkles of the joint of the finger, and connection information of two branch points can be extracted as the features. The enrollment unit  20  associates the attribute information of the user, the feature extracted from the blood vessel pattern and the feature extracted from the surface pattern with each other, and enrolls the attribute information and the features in the database  40 . The authentication unit  30  compares the feature extracted from the blood vessel pattern and the feature extracted from the surface pattern at the time of the authentication with each feature enrolled in the database  40 . According to the present variation, both of the features of the blood vessel pattern and the surface pattern are used, so that authentication accuracy improves. 
         [0044]    All examples and conditional language recited herein are intended for pedagogical purposes to aid the reader in understanding the invention and the concepts contributed by the inventor to furthering the art, and are to be construed as being without limitation to such specifically recited examples and conditions, nor does the organization of such examples in the specification relate to a showing of the superiority and inferiority of the invention. Although the embodiments of the present invention have been described in detail, it should be understood that the various change, substitutions, and alterations could be made hereto without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.

Technology Category: 3