INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF WISDOM BASED COMPUTING, VOL.

1(3), DECEMBER 2011

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Survey: Applications of Bravura Information in Human Hand

CMS

B. Shanmugapriya , R. Rajesh College of Science and Commerce, Coimbatore, India. shanmugapriyaa.b@gmail.com Department of Computer Applications, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore - 641046, India. kollamrajeshr@ieee.org

AbstractThe hand is a very important interface for humans. Many interactions are performed by hand including object handling, communication & numerous other tasks in everyday life. In this paper, the main focus is to visualize the handling of information from a human hand image in various applications like Biometrics, Medical diagnosis & Prophesy. The geometrical dimensions of a human hand, such as hand, nger or palm geometry contain information that in capable of verifying an individual, ailment detection, & prophecy. Index TermsBiometrics, Image Processing, Medical Diagnosis, Prophesy.

I. I NTRODUCTION

HE human hand has a complex anatomical structure consisting of bones, muscles, tendons, skin, and the complex relationship between them [1]. It is important in various elds, including ergonomics, HCI, hand surgery, as well as computer animation. In biomechanics, mechanical joints of the hand are important. In 1999 [1], the axis of rotation between two bones is dened as a line that does not move in relationship with either bone while the bones move around each other. The surface anatomy of the hand as well as the bone structure is unique for an individual human hand [2]. Due to their uniqueness, hand surface features have been proposed for biometric use. Biometrics refers to identify the physical or behavioral characteristics include the features like ngerprints, face, hand geometry, etc used for the identication of a person [9]. Hand geometry refers to the geometric structure of hand which includes lengths of ngers, widths at various points on the nger, diameter of the palm, thickness of the palm, skin texture etc.,

A palm of the hand has three principal lines (distal palmar, proximal palmar and thenar creases) that are unique and unchanging biometrics suitable to identify a person [3]. In the palmar skin, it has lots of discontinuous wrinkles. Among the wrinkles, a few salient creases are meaningful in terms of surface anatomy. Also, hand reading uses these lines to indicate the individual characteristics. It is the study of the hand lines to predict the future, assess personalities and provide counseling. Medically, the hands line, shape, and texture are used to detect the abnormalities that will help to diagnose physical and mental diseases [19]. Usually when a patient is examined by a doctor, the doctor used to examine the ow of blood on the nails by holding the nger and pressing the tip of the nger to identify the symptoms of diseases. For example, if the blood ow in the nail is less, it indicates the person is anemic [18]. Hand reading also helps the doctor to recognize the weakness of the system & advice the patients to prevent diseases from becoming severe. The main focus of this paper is to enlighten the applications of valuable information in human hand. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II presents the methods of image processing. Section III discusses about the various applications of hidden information from human hand image. Section IV concludes the paper. II. I MAGE P ROCESSING S TEPS - A V IEW Image processing usually refers to digital image processing and analog image processing. Image processing is a technique to enhance raw images received by various devices. Digital image processing is a processing of digital images by means of digital

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computer [4]. Digital Images are produced by a variety of physical devices, including still and video cameras, x-ray devices, electron microscopes, radar, and ultrasound, and used for a variety of purposes, including entertainment, medical, business, industrial, military, civil, security, and scientic [5][6][7]. A. Image Acquisition Image acquisition can be carried out by using either off-line or live-scan. Ink-technique is used to acquire an off-line image. Live-scan digital images acquired by electronic scanning devices where the ngerprint is directly sensed [8] shown in gure 1(a). The sensors like high resolution CCD camera can be used to capture a silhouette image of the hand while guided on the plate. Digital cameras can capture high resolution image in longer distance shown in gure 1(b). Generally, it includes dedicated digital image processing chips to convert the raw data from the image sensor into a color-corrected image in a standard image le format. Images from digital cameras often receive further processing to improve their quality by normalization, image segmentation & image enhancement. B. Image Preprocessing Once the input is captured, the original color image is preprocessed by converting it into gray scale. It is easily transformed to binary image by thresholding because of clear distinct intensity between the hand and the background. It can be done through MATLAB function im2bw. The threshold value is computed automatically by using Otsu Method [16]. It is necessary to improve the clarity of ridge structures of ngerprint, texture & line of hand images by maintaining their integrity, removing noise and blurring effect. The MATLAB function imlter is used to remove fake pixels and justify edges of an image. Pixel-wise method & Block-wise method like Contextual ltering based on Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT) & Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) and K-means based segmentation method (SKI) are used for image segmentation [10]. Gabor lter and Gaussian lter are used as the Smoothing lter for image enhancement [9]. C. Feature Extraction The preprocessed image is used to extract the features. In general, features can be divided into
Fig. 1. Captured a)Fingerprint b)Hand Image

three different categories 1) Point features, include minutiae features from ridges existing in the palm, and delta point features from delta regions found in the nger-root region. 2) Line features include the three relevant palmar principal lines, owed to exing the hand and wrist in the palm, and other wrinkle lines and curves (thin and irregular) shown in gure 2. 3) Texture features of the skin. The feature extraction algorithms are applied to get feature vector of the biometric image. There are various feature extraction techniques like Independent Component Analysis (ICA), Linear Discriminate Component Analysis (LDA), Principal Component Analysis (PCA), geometrical parameters, lines topology, texture features, Wavelets and Fourier transforms, Zernike Moments etc [11][12]. Gray-level method, Thinning technique, Sobel Code, Contour tracing algorithm and Curve tracing operations are applied to estimate the crease orientation, shape, curvature, edge contours etc [8]. D. Feature Classication & Matching Classication is an important subproblem for recognition/matching with large databases. Fingerprints are classied into ve major classes namely, Right loop; Left loop; Arch; Tented arch and Whorl. Classication techniques can be assigned to one of these categories: Rule-based, Syntactic, Structural, Statistical, Neural Network-based and MultiClassier approaches. Some of the most widely used classiers are Bayes decision rule, K-Nearest Neighbor (K-NN) and Support Vector Machines (SVM) [9][13]. Four general distance measures are used for the comparison purpose in verifying the identity of the individual through feature matching are Absolute distance, Manhattan distance, Hamming distance, Euclidean distance and Cosine Angle. Theory of fuzzy logic used to distinguish identication with weighted

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Fig. 2.

Feature Extraction

Hand geometry is the contour of hand, nger tips, and nger valleys. It refers to the geometric structure of hand, which includes lengths of ngers, widths at various points on the nger, diameter of the palm, thickness of the palm, etc., Hand Geometry features can be easily combined with other biometric traits, such as palmprint, ngerprint, face, etc, in multimodal biometric systems. It is used in airport to restrict to access critical areas, child care centers to verify the identity parents, payroll accuracy and access control [12]. B. Prigure the human life A human hand is a map reecting an individuals personality and personal potential. It interprets the length of the palm and ngers, the four hand types, thumbs, marks on the ngers, the lines, ngernails, the mounts, timing in the palm, and even the meaning of rings. For example, the shape and size of the hand helps to know the strengths and weakness of an individual. Hand reading is an art or science of reading a persons nature, secrets of the brain fate character, career and his life from the lines and lineaments on his hands. Hand reading is possibly easier with the use of hand geometry. Using hand geometry, it is possible to examine the characteristics of the ngers, ngerprints, palm skin patterns, skin texture & color, shape of the palm, palm lines and curves [17]. Information on the laws and practice of hand reading has been found in Vedic scripts, the bible and early Semitic writings. Three different sections of the hand like ngers, middle palm and lower half of the hand represents the mind, day-to-day life and primal instincts & health. The major lines on the palm shown in gure 3 include 1) Life line represents the persons vitality and vigor, physical health and well being. 2) Head line represents the persons mind and the way it works. 3) Heart line represents matters of the heart, both physical and metaphorical. 4) Simian line indicates the persons intense nature. 5) Fate line represents the persons life path, including school and career choices, successes and obstacles [18]. Other minor lines, mounts and different marks related to the major lines of the palm helps to indicate the clear vision of an individual characteristics, behavior and healthy life. Medical Science is also utilizing the knowledge of hand reading. The ancient physicians had developed

fusion information of hand geometry and palm prints. Neural networks are known for the ability to solve various complex problems in image processing. III. A PPLICATIONS A. Biometric Systems Generally, ID cards, punch, secret password and PIN are used for personal identication but the IDs can be stolen; passwords can be forgotten or cracked. The biometric identication overcomes all the above & provides additional security [9]. Biometrics refers to identify the physical or behavioral characteristics used for the identication of a person. These characteristics include the features like ngerprints, face, hand geometry, voice, and iris biometric features. These biometrics features can be used for authentication purpose in computer based security systems. Depending upon the applications in various computer based security systems, suitable biometrics can be selected. A ngerprint is a pattern of ridges and valleys located on the surface of each nger tip. A set of distinctive features make a ngerprint unique. These features are unique to every nger and to every person. Moreover, ngerprints of the identical twins are different. Fingerprints are widely used as a method of personal authentication for a very long time because of authentication performance, cost, device size, and ease of use [14]. Among all the biometric techniques, ngerprint recognition [8] is the most popular method and is successfully used in many applications like security access in banks, computer networks, ATMs, attendance systems, civil applications, forensic identication, and various industries like Health care, Financial, Hospitality, Education, Telecommunications, governments, law enforcement etc [15].

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Fig. 3.

Major Lines on the Palm Fig. 4. a)Nail Disorder b)Simian Line c)Palmar Keratosis

a method to diagnose diseases by studying the pulse. Hand reading looks the hands lines, shape & texture to detect abnormalities that will help to diagnose physical & mental diseases [19]. Diseases can be easily diagnosed with the help of hand reading today. It provides the warning for forthcoming diseases. It helps in prognosis of diseases where the doctors are unsure about it. It also helps the doctor to recognize the weakness of the system & advice the patients to prevent diseases before coming severe. C. Medical Diagnosis In medicine, diagnosis is the process of identifying a medical condition or disease by its signs, symptoms, and from the results of various diagnostic procedures. It is dened by two distinct dictionary denitions. The rst is The recognition of a disease by its signs and symptoms. The second is The analysis of the underlying physiological/ biochemical causes of a disease. It began in earnest from the ancient times of Egypt & Greece. The practice of diagnosis continues by theories in the early 20th century [20]. In clinical practice, a doctor begins an interaction with an examination of the patients medical history, record, interview [21], physical examinations and medical tests. Basic diagnosis medical devices (e.g., stethoscope, depressor) are typically used. There are four diagnostic methods used namely, inspection, auscultation (listen) - Olfaction (smelling), Interrogation (interview), palpation (pulse examination & body pressing-touching), for the disease of infection, uremia, diabetic etc. Image processing techniques are developed for analyzing remote sensing data that are modied to analyze the outputs of medical imaging

systems to analyze symptoms of the patients easily [6][7][22]. Usually when a patient is examined by a doctor, the doctor used to examine the ow of blood on the nails by holding the nger and pressing the tip of the nger. If the color of the hand is yellowish, then he is prone to jaundice. If the palm as a whole is red in color, it denotes that the subject is suffering from high blood pressure [18]. If the nails are halfwhite and half-pink shown in gure 4(a), this could indicate diabetes & kidney problems. Abnormalities such as vertical ridges on the nger nails, or a particular palm line faint in color, can represent a diagnosis for all sorts of illness from intestinal problems to heart disease. Dermatoglyphics is the study of ridge patterns and formations found on the ngertips and the palm itself used to diagnose inherited diseases [23]. By looking at three areas of the hand (ngernails, heart line and the Mount of Venus, the area at the base of the thumb) represent the warnings for diseases like heart disease, diabetes, urinal tract infection, urine stones, kidney-related diseases, mental depression and severe memory complaints. The simian line shown in gure 4(b) has also been related to various (non-)genetic diseases such as: diabetes mellitus (type 1 & 2), familial deafness, leprosy, and rheumatoid arthritis. Tripe palm describes a skin condition in which the skin of the palm becomes thick and velvety-white with pronounced folds in the lines of the hand. The skin resembles boiled tripe. Its a sign of cancer. Multiple studies have indicated that palmar keratosis shown in gure 4(c) is often seen in patients with

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various types of cancers, including: bladder cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, renal cancer & colon cancer. Even medical researchers have discovered a link between generic abnormalities & unusual markings in the hand. They have conrmed a link between specic ngerprint patterns & heart disease. Kumar, a scientist in ISRO also observed similar palm lines in many hands with specic diseases such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease [19]. IV. C ONCLUSION This paper has presented about the handling of valuable information from human hand image in various elds like biometrics, prophesy and medical diagnosis. The biometric hand geometry features can be easily acquired and measured for processing only in the presence of a person. It has been proved to be accurate, very effective and highly condential computer based security systems. Hand reading is useful to predict the future, assess personalities and provide counseling. However, from the medical point of view, now, palmistry has emerged as a science in its own right that has helped doctors and patients alike in diagnosing difcult diseases. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The rst author is thankful to CMS College of Science & Commerce and Bharathiar University for their valuable support. The second author is thankful to all the team members of TDC group, NeST for their valuable support. The second author is an Assistant Professor (on leave) in the Department of Computer Applications, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore and he is thankful to Bharathiar University authorities for their valuable support. R EFERENCES
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