Patent attributes
Methods and systems involving image processing extract from an image and estimate unique intrinsic characteristics (scanner pattern) of a biometric scanner, such as area type fingerprint scanner. The scanner pattern is permanent over time, can identify a scanner even among scanners of the same manufacturer and model, and can be used to verify if a scanner acquired an image is the same as the scanner used for biometric enrollment, i.e., to authenticate the scanner and prevent security attacks on it. One method comprises selecting pixels from an enrolled and query image, masking useful pixels from the images, computing a similarity score between the common pixels of the enrolled and query useful pixels, and comparing this score with a threshold to determine whether the query image has been acquired by the same scanner as the enrolled image. The method can further comprise inverting the pixel values and/or filtering the selected pixels.
