Biometrics technology continues to stride forward with its wider acceptance and its real need in various new security facets of modern society. From simply logging on to a laptop to crossing the border of a country, biometrics is being called upon to meet the growing challenges of identity management. With contributions from academia and industry by leading international authorities in the field, this unique book presents a comprehensive treatment of biometrics and offers coverage of the entire gamut of topics in the field, including data acquisition, pattern-matching algorithms, and issues that impact at the system level, such as standards, security, networks, and databases. It has been organized under three sections: sensors, advances in biometric matching algorithms, and topics that deal with issues at the systems level. Key features: • Includes new algorithmic advances, including physiological biometrics (face from video, iris at a distance) and behavioral (handwriting, voice) and a strikingly novel modality in headprint biometrics • Contains new modalities for research, such as infrared and multispectral imaging • Presents several chapters on the much overlooked area relating to the sensors themselves for the various biometric modalities • Emphasizes the advances and cutting-edge technologies throughout • Discusses systems level both from a human-factors point of view and the perspective of networking, databases, privacy and anti-spoofing • Incorporates chapters devoted to touchless image capture, ultrasonic imaging and swipe methods Written for researchers and advanced students, this much needed concise volume is an ideal tool to use as a ready reference and captures the very latest in state-of-the-art research, providing readers with a broader and deeper understanding of the topic. Dr Nalini K. Ratha is a Research Staff Member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, New York. He co-edited the successful Automatic Fingerprint Recognition Systems and also co-authored A Guide to Biometrics Selection and System Design Professor Venu Govindaraju is Director at the Center for Unified Biometrics and Sensors (CUBS), University at Buffalo, State University of New York.