An Efficient Hand Image Segmentation Algorithm for Hand Geometry Based Biometrics Recognition

In most of the previous works on hand-based recognition methods, mostly, the significance was not given to the side of the hand, which is used in the model. The palm side of the hand is generally used because, it is very easy to capture using a simple scanning device and we can extract the shape based features as well as the palm print from the same image. Dorsum of hand (backside of hand or topside of hand) is the apposite side of the palm side of the hand. In this work, we highlight some of the advantages of using dorsum of hand for modeling a biometrics based human recognition system. Segmenting the hand image is the most important step in any hand geometry based recognition systems. We realized that the segmentation algorithm used for segmenting the palm side of the hand will not be suitable for segmenting the dorsum of hand. In this paper, we address a simple and fast method for segmenting the dorsum of hand image. The proposed method can be used in hand geometry based recognition algorithms which use the dorsum of hand as the input.