Developed by Hitachi’s medical teams, the new technology is considered to be much more accurate and secure than other biometric tests like fingerprinting and iris authentication.
When a finger is placed near the scanner, a near-infrared light highlights the location of the veins inside. Red blood cells in the veins absorb the rays and show up on a computer ‘map’ as lines. After a template has been made, it is compared with previous patterns and access is quickly granted, or denied.
The accuracy of conventional fingerprinting can be affected by external factors such as dryness or roughness on the surface of the skin. As finger vein patterns are internal, forgery is extremely difficult, and tests have shown Hitachi’s scanners to have an incredibly low ‘false acceptance’ rate of 0.0001%.
While vein authentication can be used for network access and door locking systems, it is the ATM market that has taken especially well to the technology. In 2006, there was an estimated 25,413 vein recognition devices on ATMs in Japan. If the technology catches on in the UK, it could spell the end of bank cards and the relatively new Chip and PIN system.
The vein recognition technology requires blood flow to work, so the finger must be intact and with its rightful owner for the machine to grant access. Additionally, user doesn’t have to touch the actual scanner, and therefore the device can be used whilst wearing latex gloves; something the medical world will undoubtedly pick up on for their access control needs.
However, other companies are also developing similar technologies for a wide range of purposes. In Japan last year, Fujitsu’s palm vein technology constituted six per cent of the market.