Low cost, high quality vein pattern recognition device with liveness Detection. Workflow and implementations

•Modular hardware device that can act as a potential standard in vein pattern recognition.•Hardware solution - combination of two powerful but low-cost cameras for scanning.•Free hand scanning scenario- achievable with a leeway of 15° hand deviation.•Multi-modal liveness test: skin characteristics- contrast, temperature, reflexivity. Vein pattern recognition in biometric applications has been researched and applied for the last two decades. However, while the methods do exhibit significant improvements over other- more prominent - biometric parameters, the influence of vein recognition systems in the biometric world is stalling. The problems are multiple, starting from the severe lack of databases containing both real and simulated blood vessel to no stimulation of algorithm creation in the absence of standardized hardware scanning modules. Most research is performed on close datasets acquired with makeshift devices that cannot be reproduced by other researches or several constraints are applied to the original data that limit the real-world applicability of the feature extraction software application or scanning hardware modules. This paper aims to propose and implement a robust, modular hardware device that retains the low-cost entry barrier for academic experiments while providing high-quality scans of the blood vessels with significant improvements over traditional scanning systems. The inclusion of a powerful liveness detector using additional raw image calculations and external parameter monitoring (image contrast, temperature or skin reflexivity) completes a possible roadmap for an open-source vein pattern device. Experiments have also shown that the resulting scans are more resilient to hand orientation and position changes due to the data provided by a real-time stereoscopic device attached to the system.