Towards biometrie features for 2D/3D sensoring of forensic handwriting

User authentication based on biometric information is an important part of computer security. A biometric system utilizes physiological or behavioural characteristics of a human being in order to confirm or to determine its identity. Handwriting as biometric modality can be based on the study of the writing result as well as on the observation of the writing process. While conventional sensors for biometric handwriting acquisition are for example flatbed scanners, graphics tablets or special signature tablets, recently the application of high-resolution, contact-less 2D/3D sensors for forensic handwriting analysis has been suggested. Since biometric and forensic handwriting focus at identification of writers, we carry out an initial study in this paper on feasibility of writing pressure based features of a contact-less 2D/3D optical sensor, providing high resolution images of intensity and topography in the nanometer range. The concept is based on dual-sensor acquisition (biometric and forensic) of writing traces, the adaption of biometric pressure based features towards 3D impressioning in the forensic data and a comparative experimental evaluation of both in terms of biometric verification performance. Therefore, in the first step handwriting probes of five persons are prepared on paper and simultaneously acquired by a biometric signature tablet. In the second step each probe is scanned by the 2D/3D optical sensor to digitize it into a topographical representation. This information is used to carry out a biometric authentication and its results are compared to those based on the signature tablet data. Our first studies show similar verification results for both.