Video Biometrics

A strong requirement to come up with secure and user- friendly ways to authenticate and identify people, to safeguard their rights and interests, has probably been the main guiding force behind biometrics research. Though a vast amount of research has been done to recognize humans based on still images, the problem is still far from solved for unconstrained scenarios. This has led to an increased interest in using video for the task of biometric recognition. Not only does video provide more information, but also is more suitable for recognizing humans in general surveillance scenarios. Other than the multitude of still frames, video makes it possible to characterize biometrics based on inherent dynamics like gait which is not possible with still images. In this paper, we describe several recent algorithms to illustrate the usefulness of videos to identify humans. A brief discussion on remaining challenges is also included.