ABSTRACT
Biometrics is short for biological metrics—measures of biological identifiers that are traits of individuals. Biometric systems often use chemical tests or optical scanners to identify a person. Fingerprint dusts, chemicals that reveal blood stains, and scanners that image a person’s facial proportions and contours are common ways to recognize or reveal biometric characteristics. One of the biggest motivations for using biometric identification is to deter fraud. Biometric characteristics can be categorized as physical or active. Most biometric identification systems rely on physical characteristics. Fingerprinting is one of the oldest and most common forms of biometric identification. Tongue prints may seem unlikely as a biometric identifier, but tongue shapes are unique and Chinese researchers have figured out ways to use a laser to image a tongue in three dimensions. Speech recognition is an active biometric, if the patterns of speaking are analyzed for characteristics such as choice of words, accents, and grammatical patterns that might be unique to an individual.
