Cardiovascular Biometrics: Combining Mechanical and Electrical Signals

The electrical signal originating from the heart, the electrocardiogram (ECG), has been examined for its potential use as a biometric. Recent ECG studies have shown that an intersession authentication performance $\sim 2$ % EER. Moreover, in the identification mode, with a testing database containing 200 individuals, the rank-1 accuracy improves from $\sim 80$ % for each individual biometric system, to $\sim 92$ % for the multibiometric system. Although there are implementation issues that would need to be resolved before this combined method could be applied in the field, this report establishes the basis and utility of the method in principle, and it identifies effective signal analysis approaches.