An anti-spoofing technique using multiple textural features in fingerprint scanners

Fingerprint verification systems may be circumvented by fake fingerprints produced using inexpensive materials like gelatin or silicon. An efficient countermeasure against these attacks is given by liveness detection. In the recent literature, different algorithms for detecting signs of vitality have been proposed. The cheapest techniques are software-based and utilize acquired fingerprint images in order to extract static or dynamic characteristics. In this paper, we propose a novel software-based solution for liveness detection based on static features coming out from the visual texture of the image. The reported results show that the use of our features effectively improves the discriminative power (between live and fake fingerprints) achieved by the algorithms proposed during the Liveness Detection Competition 2009.