Computer Vision for Vein Finding as a Biometric

As a computer vision PhD student at Georgia Tech, I constantly searched for interesting computer vision ideas with which to start a company. I explored all sorts of options and kept notes as I discovered interesting ideas. I’ve written about some of my failed grad school attempts at startups before.

One of those startup ideas (back in 2006) was to use computer vision techniques to detect vein patterns in hands or fingers as a unique biometric, similar to how fingerprints are used. But since fingerprints are susceptible to imitation with enough effort, the idea is that no one would be able to fake your vein pattern.

Two weeks ago, I ran across an article that talked about an emerging application for this idea in authentication for financial transactions. Here’s a picture of a Hitachi vein finder:

hitachi_vein

I had two thoughts when I saw this article: 1) it was really fun to see an idea we can considered 8 years ago coming to life now, and 2) it made me want to continue to search for new and interesting applications for computer vision techniques. If you can think of interesting applications for detecting objects in imagery, let me know! I love brainstorming about computer vision!

What other interesting computer vision applications have you seen?

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