On the use of fingernail images as transient biometric identifiers

The significant advantages that biometric recognition technologies offer are in danger of being left aside in everyday life due to concerns over the misuse of such data. The biometric data employed so far focuses on the permanence of the characteristics involved. A concept known as ‘the right to be forgotten’ is gaining momentum in international law and this should further hamper the adoption of permanent biometric recognition technologies. However, a multitude of common applications are short-term and, therefore, non-permanent biometric characteristics would suffice for them. In this paper we discuss ‘transient biometrics,’ i.e. recognition via biometric characteristics that will change in the short term and show that images of the fingernail plate can be used as a transient biometric with a useful life-span of less than 6 months. A direct approach is proposed that requires no training and a relevant evaluation dataset is made publicly available.