Master Thesis

Electrical Engineering
September 2017

Online Handwritten Signature

Verification System
using Gaussian Mixture Model and Longest
Common Sub-Sequences

Shashidhar Sanda
Sravya Amirisetti

Department of Applied Signal Processing

Blekinge Institute of Technology
SE–371 79 Karlskrona, Sweden
This thesis is submitted to the Department of Applied Signal Processing at Blekinge Institute
of Technology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in
Electrical Engineering with emphasis in Signal Processing.

Contact Information:
Author(s):
Shashidhar Sanda
E-mail: shsa16@student.bth.se

Sravya Amirisetti
E-mail: sram16@student.bth.se

Thesis Superviser:
Dr. Josef Ström Bartunek
Dept. Applied Signal Processing
E-mail:josef.strombartunek@bth.se

University Examiner:
Dr. Sven Johansson
Dept. Applied Signal Processing
E-mail:sven.johansson@bth.se

Dept.Applied Signal Processing Internet : www.bth.se

Blekinge Institute of Technology Phone : +46 455 38 50 00
SE–371 79 Karlskrona, Sweden Fax : +46 455 38 50 57
 Abstract

Nowadays, human identifications are necessary for our routine activi-

ties such as entering any secure locations besides many other applica-
tions. To that end, higher security levels need with easier user inter-
action which can be achieved using bio-metric verification. Bio-metric
verification helps us identify people based on their extracted physical
or behavioural features. These features should have certain properties
such as uniqueness, permanence, acceptability, collectability, and the
cost to employ any bio-metric.

HSV is one of the bio-metric verification which authenticates whether

the signature is genuine or forged. In our study a new approach is
proposed for online signature verification using classifier model and
comparing techniques. The classifier model i.e., GMM is used to ex-
tract the physical and behaviour features. The comparison technique
i.e., LCSS is used for comparing extracted features.

The publicly available online handwritten signature data(MCYT-100

database) is used for experiments. The results obtained in the form
of performance metric curves called FAR, FAR, EER, ROC curves.

To know the performance of the verification system, it is compared

with the widely used comparing technique called Dynamic Time Warp-
ing. Our experiments show that GMM with the LCSS authenticate
persons very reliably and with a performance better and matching
with best comparing technique, DTW.

Keywords: Signature Verification,GMM, LCSS, DTW, FAR, FRR,

EER, ROC Curves.
 Acknowledgments

Firstly, we would like to express my sincere gratitude to our su-

pervisor Dr. Josef Ström Bartůněk for the continuous support of our
master thesis study and related research, for his patience, motivation,
and immense knowledge. His guidance helped us in all the time of re-
search and writing of this thesis. we could not have imagined having
a better advisor and mentor for our thesis study.

Besides our supervisor, we would like to thank our thesis examiner

Dr. Sven Johansson for his insightful comments and encouragement.
We would like to express our deepest gratitude to the Department of
Applied signal processing for helping us throughout the research.

Last but not the least, I would like to thank our friends, our family:
our parents and to our brothers and sister for supporting us spiritually
throughout writing this thesis and our life in general.

ii
 Contents

Abstract i

Acknowledgments ii

1 Introduction 1
1.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.3 Problem Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.4 Aim and Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.5 Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.6 Outline of Thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2 Literature Study 5

3 Background 7
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2 Signature Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.3 Preprocessing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.4 Feature Extraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.5 Verification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

4 Proposed Method 12
4.1 Pre-processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.2 Feature Extraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.2.1 First order difference of basic features . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.2.2 Second order difference of spatial co-ordinates . . . . . . . 14
4.2.3 Sine and Cosine Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.2.4 Length based features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.3 GMM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.3.1 Maximum Likelihood Parameter Estimation . . . . . . . . 16
4.3.2 EM Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.4 LCSS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.4.1 Basic Similarity Measure for Time Series . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.4.2 Multivariate Time Series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

iii
 4.5 DTW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.6 LCSS vs DTW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

5 Performance Evaluation 22
5.1 Setup of the Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
5.2 Performance Evaluation Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

6 Results and Discussion 27

6.1 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
6.1.1 FAR and FRR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
6.1.2 EER Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
6.1.3 ROC Curve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
6.2 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
6.2.1 Answers to Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
6.2.2 Problems faced during implementation . . . . . . . . . . . 33

7 Conclusion and Future Work 34

7.1 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
7.2 Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

References 36

iv
 List of Figures

1.1 Typical Signature Verification System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

3.1 Module of Signature Verification System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

4.1 Block diagram of implementation of online signature verification

system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.2 Basic features (a) Before Normalization, (b) After Normalization . 13
4.3 Example of how two sequences are compared using LCSS . . . . . 19
4.4 Example of how comparison takes place in DTW and LCSS. . . . 21

5.1 a) Genuine signature b) Features of Genuine signature c) Forgery

signature d) Features of Forgery signature. These signatures are
from MCYT-100 signature database. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5.2 FAR and FRR of a bio-metric verification system . . . . . . . . . 25
5.3 ROC Curve created by plotting the TPR against the FPR at var-
ious threshold settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

6.1 Plot showing FAR curves for both combinations GMM-LCSS and
GMM-DTW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
6.2 Plot showing FRR curves for both combinations GMM-LCSS and
GMM-DTW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
6.3 Plot showing FAR and FRR curves for combination GMM-LCSS . 30
6.4 Plot showing FAR and FRR curves for combination GMM-DTW . 30
6.5 Plot showing ROC curve for combination GMM-LCSS . . . . . . 31
6.6 Plot showing ROC curve for combination GMM-DTW . . . . . . 31
6.7 Plot showing the comparison of ROC curves for both combinations
GMM-LCSS and GMM-DTW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

v
 List of Tables

3.1 List of Common Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

6.1 Table showing FAR percentage values for different thresholds for
both combinations GMM-LCSS and GMM-DTW . . . . . . . . . 28
6.2 Table showing FRR percentage values for different thresholds for
both combinations GMM-LCSS and GMM-DTW . . . . . . . . . 28

vi
 List of Abbreviations

DT W Dynamic Time Warping

EER Equal Error Rate

EM Expectation Maximization

F AR False Acceptance Rate

F F T Fast Fourier Transform

FN False Negative

FP False Positive

F P R False Positive Rate

F RR False Rejection Rate

GM M Gaussian Mixture Model

HM M Hidden Markov Model

HSV Handwritten Signature Verification

LCSS Longest Common Sub-Sequence

M AP Maximum A Posteriori

M CY T Ministerio de Cienia y Tecnologia

M LE Maximum Likelihood Estimation

M LP Multi Layer Perceptron

NN Neural Networks

ROC Receiver Operation Characteristics

SV M Support Vector Machine

TN True Negative

vii
TP True Positive

T P R True Positive Rate

U BM Universal Background Model

viii
Chapter 1
Introduction

1.1 Motivation
Signature is the most socially and legally accepted means for person authenti-
cation and is therefore a modality confronted with high level attacks. Signa-
ture verification plays an important role in identification of forgery signature and
bio-metric application. Bio-metrics measures individuals unique physical or be-
havioral characteristics with the aim of recognizing or authenticating identity.
Physical characteristics in a bio-metric attribute include iris, hand geometry, face
and fingerprints. Among these iris and fingerprints do not change over time and
thus have very small intra-class variation, they require special and relatively ex-
pensive hardware to capture the bio-metric image. Behavioral characteristics in a
bio-metric attribute include signature, voice, keystroke pattern, and gait [1]. The
most developed characteristics among these are the signature and voice technolo-
gies.
Handwritten signature is a well know bio-metric attribute. An important advan-
tage of hand written signature over other identification verification technologies
is that it can only be applied when the person is conscious and willing to write
unlike the finger print technology where it can be taken when the person is un-
conscious also [2]. HSV is classified into two types online and offline. Offline
signature verification includes a document where the signature is present, it is
scanned to obtain digitalized image representation. Online signature verification
uses a special hardware, such as a digitalized tablet or a pressure sensitive pen.
The shape and the dynamics of writing are captured in the online signature ver-
ification [3].

1.2 Problem Statement

Online (dynamic) signature verification uses signatures that are captured by
pressure-sensitive tablets that extract dynamic properties of a signature in addi-
tion to its shape. Dynamic features include the number and order of the strokes,

1
Chapter 1. Introduction 2

Figure 1.1: Typical Signature Verification System

the overall speed of the signature, the pen pressure at each point, etc. and make
the signature more unique and more difficult to forge [4].

In an online signature verification system figure 1.1, the users are first enrolled by
providing signature samples (reference signatures). When a user presents a signa-
ture (test signature) claiming to be an individual, this test signature is compared
with the reference signatures for that individual. If the dissimilarity is above a
certain threshold, the user is rejected. During verification, the test signature is
compared to all the signatures in the reference set, resulting in several distance
values [5]. One must choose a method to combine these distance values into a
single value representing the dissimilarity of the test signature to the reference
set, and compare it to a threshold to decide. The single dissimilarity value can
be obtained from the minimum, maximum or the average of all the distance val-
ues. Typically, a verification system chooses one of these and discards the others.
In evaluating the performance of a signature verification system, there are two
important factors: the FRR of genuine signatures and the FAR of forgery signa-
tures. As these two errors are inversely related, th EER where FAR equals FRR
is often reported [6].

1.3 Problem Solution

To determine whether signature is genuine or forgery a new approach is proposed
in dealing with the online signature verification a combination of two methods
GMM and LCSS using publicly available signature database i.e., MCYT-100.
Firstly, the signature is normalized and the parameters of the GMM are esti-
mated by the Maximum Likelihood method. The Maximum likelihood method
Chapter 1. Introduction 3

estimation technique finds the parameters that maximize the joint likelihood of
the data which are supposed to be independent and identically distributed. In
the Gaussian mixture, it captures the underlying statistical variability’s of the
point based features, being used for describing the online trace of the signatures.
Then LCSS detection algorithm which measures the similarity of signature time
series. A threshold value is set and a decision is made comparing the test signa-
ture values with the database signature values whether the signature is genuine
or forgery. To evaluate LCSS performance, it is compared with the most widely
used technique called DTW.

1.4 Aim and Objectives

The aim of this thesis is to propose an approach for verification of online Hand-
written signatures.

1. Collecting online handwritten signature via a digital tablet or pen based

input device can provide very useful dynamic features such as writing speed,
pen orientation and pressure in addition static shape information.

2. Deriving set of features from model based classifier i.e., GMM.

3. Measuring the similarity of signature using LCSS Algorithm.

4. Determining FAR, FRR, ERR and ROC curves to know the performance
of signature verification.

5. Evaluation of performance by comparing it with most widely used technique

called DTW.

1.5 Research Questions

The following are the research questions:

1. What are the former methods used for online handwritten signature verifi-
cation?

2. How LCSS algorithm is better when compared to other matching algo-

rithms?

3. How many genuine signatures are needed to train a reliable GMM-LCSS

classifier?

4. Can LCSS be used in combination with other classification models?

Chapter 1. Introduction 4

1.6 Outline of Thesis

Chapter 1: Here we discuss the main aim for this thesis, motivation, problem
statement, aims and objectives, research questions, outline of thesis.

Chapter 2: In this chapter we discuss on the literature study

Chapter 3: In this chapter the background knowledge for good understand-

ing of the thesis is defined in detail step by step.

Chapter 4: In this chapter the proposed methodology is explained in detailed.

Chapter 5: In this chapter the performance evaluation factors are explained

in detail.

Chapter 6: In this chapter the results obtained and answers to the research
questions are discussed in detail.

Chapter 7: In this chapter conclusion and future scope are discussed.

Chapter 2
Literature Study

There are several surveys conducted on the handwritten signature verification

systems and the methodologies used. Several approaches have been recently
proposed and lot of research has been carried out for both feature extraction
and classification using HMM, SVM, FFT, MLP wavelets and NN [4][5]. Several
matching strategies employed in signature analysis are holistic matching, regional
matching and multiple regional matching. Some of the most diffuse techniques re-
ported are Euclidean distance, Elastic matching, regional correlation, tree match-
ing,relaxation matching, split and merge, string matching, NN, HMM, SVM [2]
[6]. The issues and challenges faced by signature verification system are discussed
in the survey reports [1] [3].

Hansheng Lei, Venu Govindaraju conducted a comparative study of features

which are commonly used. Generalizing the existing feature-based measure a
consistency model is developed to measure the distances-based measure. Experi-
mental results shown that the simple features like X -, Y - coordinates, the speed
of writing and the angle with the X -axis are among the most consistent and it
was found that uniformly re-sampling the sequences does not necessarily increase
verification performance [2].

Dr.Maged M.M.Fahmy presented a online handwritten signature verification sys-

tem based on discrete wavelet transforms(DWT) features extraction and feed
forward back error neural network classification [7]. To enhance the difference
between a genuine signature and its forgery, the signature is verified in DWT
domain. A multi-matcher consists of six neural networks which use multiple rep-
resentations and matching for the same input bio-metric signal is used to verify
signature. The recognition rate for each of these neural network recognizers is
discussed and a comparison of those rates is performed. Experiments are carried
on signature database for five users each of 20 genuine and 20 skilled forgery
signatures. Recognition success rate for genuine signatures obtained is 95%.

5
Chapter 2. Literature Study 6

Christian Gruber, Thiemo Gruber, Sebastian Krinninger proposed a new method

to verify online signature verification with support vector machines based on
LCSS kernel function [8]. Here the similarities of the two time series are de-
termined by the length of an LCSS using a kernel function. This new technique
shown that the SVM LCSS, can authenticate persons very reliably if only six gen-
uine signatures are used for training. It turned out that the LCSS-based similarity
assessment of online signature data is even superior to DTW-based techniques [9].

Abhishek Sharma and Suresh Sundaram has proposed a new model based ap-
proach, GMM into the DTW framework to verify the online signatures [10].
Firstly, they extracted the writer dependent statistical characteristics for sig-
nature matching. Then the characteristics of a warping path is being analyzed
using a derivation in warping path based feature which is useful for verification.
Later a fusion of the proposed warping path based feature with the normalize
DTW score for enhancing the verification performance of DTW based system is
done. This new model based method has been demonstrated successfully on the
signature data from the available MCYT data base and is the first one that uses
the features derived from a GMM in a DTW matching algorithm for improved
verification of online signatures [11] [12].

Gabriel [13] proposed the problem of training on-line signature verification sys-
tems when the number of training samples is small, where the number of avail-
able signatures per user is limited. Nine different classification strategies based
on GMM, and the UBM are evaluated. These models are designed to work under
small-sample size conditions and tested using three different experiments. The
performance of these methods degraded faster when the training set included less
than 50% of the samples (around 12 signatures per user). The decision was made
by estimating the likelihood ratio and comparing it with respect to the EER deci-
sion threshold. The accuracy obtained by the GMM-SVM models, is considerable
better than the GMM-UBM models when the available training subset is at least
50% of the whole database.

Beatrice drott and Thomas Hassan-Reza proposed an approach where classifi-

cation of forgery and genuine signature is done by binary classification first by
simple engineered features, then by machine learning techniques as logistic re-
gression, MLP and finally by a deep learning approach with a convolutional neu-
ral network. The deep learning approach on the signature verification problem
showed promising results but there is still need for improvement [14].
Chapter 3
Background

In this chapter, the detailed background about signature verification is discussed.

The module of signature verification system is shown in figure 3.1.

3.1 Introduction
Online hand written signature verification is a process of testing whether a signa-
ture is genuine or forgery. A signature can easily be forged. Forgeries of signatures
are classified into three types: simple, random and skilled forgery [15] [16].

Random Forgery: It is produced by the forger without knowing the writers

name as well as genuine signature.

Simple Forgery: In which the forger has no idea what the signature to be
forged looks like. This is the easiest type of forgery to detect because it is usu-
ally not close to the appearance of a genuine signature. This type of forgery
will sometimes allow an examiner to identify who made the forgery based on the
handwriting habits that are present in the forged signature.

Skilled forgery: In which the forger has a sample of the signature to be forged.
The quality of a simulation depends on how much the forger practices before at-
tempting the actual forgery, the ability of the forger, and the forger’s attention to
detail in simulating the signature. A skilled forgery looks more like the genuine
signature. The problem of signature verification becomes more and more diffi-
cult when passing from simple to skilled forgery. Currently, there is a growing
demand for the processing of individual identification to be faster and more accu-
rate, therefore the design of a signature verification system becomes an important
challenge.

7
Chapter 3. Background 8

Figure 3.1: Module of Signature Verification System

Chapter 3. Background 9

3.2 Signature Database

The Biometric Research Laboratory, ATVS, of the Universidad Politécnica de
Madrid, has promoted the plan of action and the development of the MCYT
project, in which the design and acquisition of a large-scale bio-metric bi-modal
database, involving fingerprint and signature traits, has been accomplished [17].
Although there are some other commercial and forensic partners within. In the
case of the MCYT Signature sub corpus, 25 client signatures and 25 highly skilled
forgeries (with natural dynamics) are obtained for everyone. Both on-line infor-
mation (pen trajectory, pen pressure and pen azimuth=altitude) and off-line in-
formation (image of the written signature) are considered in the database. There-
fore, 330 × (25 + 25) =16500 signature samples are considered in the MCYT
baseline on-line corpus. Since the acquisition of each on-line signature is accom-
plished dynamically, a graphics tablet is needed: the acquisition device used is
a WACOM pen tablet, model. The sampling frequency of the acquired signals
is set to 100 Hz, considering the Nyquist sampling criterion, as the maximum
frequencies of the underlying bio-mechanical movements are always under 2030
Hz [17].

3.3 Preprocessing
Preprocessing of online signatures is commonly done to remove variations that
are thought to be irrelevant to the verification performance. Re-sampling, size,
and rotation normalization are among the common preprocessing steps. In the
preprocessing phase, the signature is undergone some enhancement process for
extracting features. The signature images require some manipulation before the
application of any recognition technique. This process prepares the image and
improves its quality to eliminate irrelevant information and to enhance the selec-
tion of the important features for recognition and to improve the robustness of
features to be extracted. Moreover, Preprocessing steps are performed to reduce
noise in the input images, and to remove most of the variability of the handwrit-
ing [15].
For online signatures, some important preprocessing algorithms are filtering, noise
reduction, and smoothing. They are also other preprocessing steps like the pen-up
duration’s, and drift and mean removal, time normalization and stroke concate-
nation before feature extraction.
To compare the spatial of a signature, time dependencies must be eliminated from
the representation. Certain points in the signature such as the start points and
the end points of a stroke and the points of a trajectory change, carry important
information. These points are the critical points and are extracted and remained
throughout the process [16].
Chapter 3. Background 10

Table 3.1: List of Common Features

List of Common Features
S.No: Description
1 Coordinate x(t)
2 Coordinate y(t)
3 Pressure p(t)
4 Time stamp
5 Absolute Position, r(t)= x2 (t) + y 2 (t)
p

6 Velocity in x νx (t)
7 Velocity in y νq
y (t)

8 Absolute Velocity v(t)= νx2 (t) + νy2 (t)

9 Velocity of r(t) νr (t)
10 Acceleration in x ax (t)
11 Acceleration in y ap y (t)
12 Absolute Acceleration, a(t)= x2 (t) + y 2 (t)

3.4 Feature Extraction

Signature verification techniques employ various specifications of a signature. Se-
lecting the features that are to be extracted has an enormous effect on the ac-
curacy of the signature verification system. It is also the most difficult phase of
signature verification system due to the different shapes of signatures and dif-
ferent situations of sampling. The feature extraction process represents a major
tackle in any signature verification system. Even there is no guarantee that two
genuine signatures of a person are accurately the same (intrapersonal variations).
Its difficulty also stems from the fact that skilled forgeries follow the genuine
pattern (interpersonal variations). This is unlike fingerprints or irises where fin-
gerprints or irises from two different persons vary widely. Ideally interpersonal
variations should be much more than the intrapersonal variations. Therefore it
is very important to identify and extract those features which minimize intrap-
ersonal variation and maximize interpersonal variations. Table 3.1 shows the list
of common features. There is a lot of flexibility in the choice of features for ver-
ification of a signature extracting information from a signature is classified into
two types:

1. Parameter Function based approach.

2. Function Feature based approach.

Parameter Function based approach

Signature verification systems differ both in their feature selection and their de-
cision methodologies. Features can be classified in two types: global and local.
Chapter 3. Background 11

Global features are features related to the signature for instance the average sign-
ing speed, the signature bounding box, and Fourier descriptors of the signatures
trajectory. Local features correspond to a specific sample point along the trajec-
tory of the signature. Examples of local features include distance and curvature
change between successive points on the signature trajectory. Most commonly
used online signature acquisition devices are pressure sensitive tablets capable of
measuring forces exerted at the pen-tip, in addition to the coordinates of the pen.
The pressure information at each point along the signature trajectory is another
example of commonly used local feature. In some of these features are compared
to find the more robust ones for signature verification purposes. Other systems
have used genetic algorithms to find the most useful features [2][15][16]

Function Feature based approach

In Function feature based approach the signature is characterized in terms of a
time function whose values constitute the feature set, such as position, velocity,
pressure, etc.

3.5 Verification
After applying the feature extraction process the test signature and the reference
signature are compared with the minimum of the dissimilarities values,Average of
all the dissimilarities and the maximum of all the dissimilarities. Choosing any
of the above dissimilarity values the a decision is made whether it is a forgery
signature or a genuine signature . this comparison is done using a threshold value
for all the reference and test signature. if the value is approximately equal to
the reference signal value then it is assumed to be a genuine signature and if
the dissimilarities is above that threshold value the signature is rejected. This
threshold value is can be identical to all the signature or it can also be different
for each of them [15][16].

Common Threshold
Common threshold is more advantageous because it has the optimal threshold
for all the writers.This value is selected after computing the dissimilarities of the
data signatures and a common threshold is selected based on the minimum error
criterion.

Writer dependent threshold

In this type of threshold the writer is limited to a single person. The data for
this threshold should be larger compared to the regular data. Here in this type of
threshold selection the writer modifies the value every time after each enrollment.
Chapter 4
Proposed Method

This chapter deals with proposed method for signature verification. The proce-
dure of implementation of online handwritten signature is based on GMM, LCSS,
DTW is shown in the figure 4.1.

4.1 Pre-processing
The data must be pre-processed before it is analyzed. In data pre-processing we
normalize the data using normalization technique. So, what is normalization?,
we often want to compare scores or sets of scores obtained on different scales.
For example, how do we compare a score of 85 in a cooking contest with a score
of 100 on an I.Q. test?. In order to do so, we need to “eliminate” the unit of
measurement, this operation is called to normalize the data.

Min-Max Normalization
In our case, min-max normalization is used to normalize each of the basic feature
data to the range [0,1]. Basic features before normalization and after normaliza-
tion is shown in figure 4.2. The formulae that is used for min-max normalization is

x − min(x)
z= (4.1)
max(x) − min(x)
where, x is the data vector, min(x) is the minimum of x, max(x) is the maximum
of x.

4.2 Feature Extraction

Feature extraction involves reducing the amount of resources required to describe
a large set of data. When performing analysis of complex data one of the major
problems stems from the number of variables involved. Analysis with a large
number of variables generally requires a large amount of memory and compu-
tation power, also it may cause a classification algorithm to over fit to training
samples and generalize poorly to new samples. Feature extraction is a general

12
Chapter 4. Proposed Method 13

Figure 4.1: Block diagram of implementation of online signature verification sys-

tem

(a) (b)

Figure 4.2: Basic features (a) Before Normalization, (b) After Normalization
Chapter 4. Proposed Method 14

term for methods of constructing combinations of the variables to get around

these problems while still describing the data with sufficient accuracy[10]. In
feature extraction module, a set of eleven features are extracted from the basic
features which are normalized to range [0,1].

4.2.1 First order difference of basic features

The most common way to remove non-stationarity is to difference the time series.
The first order difference of a time series is the series of changes from one period to
the next. If x(t) denotes the value of the time series(basic feature) x at period t,
then the first difference of x at period t is equal to x(t)-x(t-1). In Stat-graphics,
the first difference of x is expressed as DIFF(x). If the first difference of x is
stationary and also completely random (not auto-correlated), then x is described
by a random walk model: each value is a random step away from the previous
value. If the first difference of x is stationary but not completely random–i.e.,
if its value at period t is auto-correlated with its value at earlier periods then a
more sophisticated forecasting model such as exponential smoothing or may be
appropriate. The following ∆x(t), ∆y(t), ∆z(t), ∆φ(t), ∆θ(t) are the first order
difference of x,y,z co-ordinates, angle and azimuthal of signature data

∆x(t) = x(t) − x(t − 1),

∆y(t) = y(t) − y(t − 1),
∆z(t) = z(t) − z(t − 1), (4.2)
∆φ(t) = φ(t) − φ(t − 1),
∆θ(t) = θ(t) − θ(t − 1).

The first order difference is defined, for t=1,2,........,n-1.

4.2.2 Second order difference of spatial co-ordinates

Sometimes, first order differencing doesn’t eliminate all non-stationarity, so a
differencing must be performed on the differenced series. This is called second
order differencing. Differencing can go on multiple times, but very rarely does
an analyst need to go beyond second order differencing to achieve stationarity.
∆2 x(t), ∆2 y(t) are the second order difference of spatial co-ordinates. The formula
for second order differencing is

∆2 x(t) = ∆x(t) − ∆x(t − 1),

(4.3)
∆2 y(t) = ∆y(t) − ∆y(t − 1).

The second order difference of spatial co-ordinates is defined, for t=1,2,........,n-2.

Chapter 4. Proposed Method 15

4.2.3 Sine and Cosine Measures

A time series can be viewed as sum of variety of cyclic components. These cyclic
components are characterized using there wavelengths as expressed via periods
and frequencies. The frequency domain analysis aims to decompose original time
series into its cyclic components and to compute their frequencies to study their
impact on the observed data. The spectral analysis uses two periodic sinusoidal
functions, sine and cosine to represent the original time series. Sine and Cosine
measures are calculated as
p
sin(α(t)) = (∆y(t))/ ((∆x(t))2 + (∆y(t))2 ),
p (4.4)
cos(α(t)) = (∆x(t))/ ((∆x(t))2 + (∆y(t))2 ).

Sine and Cosine measures of the angle α computed with respect to horizontal
axis, defined for t=1,2,...,n-1.

4.2.4 Length based features

The length of the signature l(t) is the square root of sum of squares of first order
difference of spatial co-ordinates i.e., x and y co-ordinates. The change in length
∆l(t) is the square root of sum of squares of second order difference of spatial
co-ordinates is calculated as
p
l(t) = (∆x(t)2 + ∆y(t2 )),
p (4.5)
∆l(t) = (∆2 x(t)2 + ∆2 y(t2 )).

The length based features defined for t=1,2,....,n-1. The feature ∆l(t) relates to
the change in length obtained between successive pen positions.

4.3 GMM
A GMM [18][19] is a probabilistic model that assumes all the data points are gen-
erated from a mixture of a finite number of Gaussian distributions with unknown
parameters. GMMs are used as a parametric model of the probability distribu-
tion of the continuous measurements or features in a bio metric system, such as
vocal tract spectral features in a speaker recognition system. GMM parameters
are estimated from training data using the iterative EM algorithm or Maximum
Likelihood Parameter estimation from a well-trained prior model [15].
A GMM is a weighted sum of M components Gaussian densities as
M
X
p(x|λ) = ωi g(x|µi , Σi ) (4.6)
i=1
Chapter 4. Proposed Method 16

where x is a D-dimensional continuous-valued data vector(i.e., measurement or

features), ωi , i=1,2,....,M, are the mixture weights and g(x|µi , Σi ), i=1,2,....,M,
are the component Gaussian densities. Each component density is a D-variate
Gaussian function of following
1 1
g(x|µi , Σi ) = D exp{− (x − µi )T Σ−1
1 i (x − µi )} (4.7)
(2π) |Σi |
2 2 2

with mean vector µi and co-variance matrix Σi . The mixture weights satisfy
M
the constraint that ωi = 1. The complete GMM is parametrized by the mean
P
i=1
vectors, co-variance matrices and mixture weights from all component densities.
These parameters are collectively represented by the following notation

λ = {ωi , µi , Σi } i = 1, ....M. (4.8)

4.3.1 Maximum Likelihood Parameter Estimation

MLE [18][19][20] is a method of estimating the parameters of a statistical model
given observations,it is used for finding the value of one or more parameters for a
given statistic which makes the known likelihood distribution a maximum. Given
training vectors and a GMM configuration, we wish to estimate the parameters
of the GMM,λ, which in some sense best matches the distribution of the training
feature vectors.For a sequence of N training vectors X = x1 , ....xN , the GMM
likelihood, assuming independence between the vectors, can be written as
N
Y
p(X|λ) = p(xt |λ). (4.9)
t=1

4.3.2 EM Algorithm
Unfortunately, the expression (equation 4.9) is a non-linear function of the param-
eters λ and direct maximization is not possible. However, EM algorithm[20][18]
is an iterative method to find Maximum Likelihood or Maximum A Posteriori
estimates of parameters in statistical models, where the model depends on unob-
served latent variables. The basic idea of the EM algorithm is, beginning with
an initial model λ, to estimate a new model λ, such that p(X|λ̄) ≥ p(X|λ). The
new model then becomes the initial model for the next iteration and the process
is repeated until some convergence threshold is reached. The steps involved in
estimating parameters of GMM model are as follows

Step1: Initialize weights(ω), mean(µ) and co-variance(Σ) using k-means algo-

rithm.
Chapter 4. Proposed Method 17

Step2: Evaluate the initial value of the log likelihood.

Step3: Expectation Step: Evaluating the responsibilities of the current pa-

rameters values
ωi g(xt |µi , Σi )
P r(i|xt , λ) = M . (4.10)
P
ωk g(xt |µk , Σk )
k=1

Step4: Maximization Step: Re-estimate the parameters using current respon-

sibilities
Mixture Weights
N
1 X
ω̄i = P r(i|xt , λ) (4.11)
N t=1
and means
N
P
P r(i|xt , λ)xt
t=1
µ̄i = N
(4.12)
P
P r(i|xt , λ)
t=1

with variances(diagonal co-variance)

N
P r(i|xt , λ)(xt − µ̄i )(xt − µ̄i )T
P
t=1
Σ̄i = N
. (4.13)
P
P r(i|xt , λ)
t=1

Step5: Evaluating Log-likelihood

N
X
lnP r(xt |µ, ω, Σ) = ln{P r(i|xt , λ)} (4.14)
t=1

If there is no convergence obtained, return to step 2.

Chapter 4. Proposed Method 18

4.4 LCSS
LCSS [8][9] is an algorithm for finding the longest sub-sequence common to all
sequences in a set of sequences (often just two sequences) or measuring the simi-
larity of two sequences.

4.4.1 Basic Similarity Measure for Time Series

Suppose if we have two uni-variate time series (sequences) S = (s1 , s2 , ......, s| S|)
and T = (t1 , t2 , ....., t| T |) with si , tj ∈ < and lengths |S| and |T |,respectively.
Without loss of generality we assume that |S| ≤ |T |. The values within a sequence
origin from equidistant points in time, which is common in many applications.
For given values of two parameters γ,  ∈ <+ with γ ≤ 1, the two sequences S
and T are called (γ, )-similar. The distance measure(d) of sample points of two
sequences S and T is
d(si , tj ) ≤  (4.15)
here, d is the euclidean distance and  describes the required similarity of two
sequences, γ is the relative length of the so-called common sub-sequence of S and
T for a given  [8][9].
For a given , we need to find maximum length of common sub-sequences. The
similarity can be find out by using the following equation,

2.|S|.max{γ|S, T are(γ, ) − similar}

Sim (S, T ) = . (4.16)
|S| + |T |

From example figure 4.3, one of the parameter value  = 0.2 can be known. The
length of common sequences is seven and length of shorter sequence is ten. So,
from equation 4.16 the similarity score is Sim0.2 (S, T ) = 2/3.

4.4.2 Multivariate Time Series

Multivariate time series must be processed in signature verification and many
other application fields, i.e., we are given S = (s1 , s2 , ......, s| S|) and T = (t1 , t2 , ....., t| T |)
with si , tj ∈ <N (N ∈ ℵ). Here, similarity of two sequences is computed in each
dimension separately and obtained results are averaged [8][9]. For each dimension
0
n = 1, ..., N, we compute Sim (Sn , Tn ) for the uni-variate sequences Sn and Tn
[8], then,
N
1 X
Sim (S, T ) = Sim (Sn , Tn ). (4.17)
N n=1
Chapter 4. Proposed Method 19

Figure 4.3: Example of how two sequences are compared using LCSS

4.5 DTW
DTW [11][12] is an algorithm for measuring similarity between two temporal
sequences, which may vary in speed. For instance, similarities in walking could
be detected using DTW, even if one person was walking faster than the other, or
if there were accelerations and deceleration’s during the course of an observation.
DTW applications include in speech, speaker, online signature recognition and
also in shaping matching.
Suppose, there are two sequences S and T of lengths ns −2 and nt −2 , a cost
matrix C is constructed with (r,s)th element in C corresponds to dissimilarity
value d(r,s) between rth point of T and sth point of S. By utilizing the elements
in matrix C, we perform the following recursion to compute the DTW distance
between T and S [10],

 ψ(r, s − 1)

ψ(r, s) = d(r, s) + min ψ(r − 1, s − 1). (4.18)

 ψ(r − 1, s)

Here ψ(r, s) is the cumulative distance up to the current element.The sequence

of cells in C comprise a ‘warping path’ denoted by Wp∗ . This path defines a
mapping between T and S, and satisfies the constraints of boundary conditions,
continuity and monotonicity. In this work, the set of cells in the warping path
Wp∗ are denoted as
lW ∗p
Wp∗ = {(a1 , b1 ), (a2 , b2 ), ....., (al W ∗p , bl W ∗p } i=1
(4.19)
Chapter 4. Proposed Method 20

the number of aligned pairs along the warping path Wp∗ is denoted by lW ∗p . The no-
tation (ai , bi ) indicates that the feature vector corresponding to ati h sample point
of T is aligned to that of bti h sample point of Sp . Owing to the boundary condi-
tions, we have (a1 , b1 ) = (1, 1) and (al W ∗p , bl W ∗p )=(nt −2, ns −2). The continuity
and monotonicity conditions necessitate that ai−1 ≤ai ≤ai−1 +1, bi−1 ≤bi ≤bi−1 +1,
1≤ai ≤nt -2 and 1≤bi ≤ns -2. The warping path Wp∗ , at times, can give rise to one
to many or many to one alignment [10][21][22]. The DTW score or similarity
score is denoted as Dsim and it is calculated as follows
lW ∗p
P
d(ai , bi )
ψ(nt − 2, ns − 2) i=1
Dsim = = . (4.20)
lW ∗p lW ∗p

4.6 LCSS vs DTW

LCSS has some advantages over DTW. Example of DTW and LCSS is shown in
figure 4.4. LCSS and DTW allows local scaling and LCSS ignores outlines.

Disadvantages of DTW

• All points are matched.

• Outliers can distort distance.

• One to many mapping.

Advantages of LCSS

• Outlying values are not matched.

• Distance/similarity distorted less.

Chapter 4. Proposed Method 21

Figure 4.4: Example of how comparison takes place in DTW and LCSS.
Chapter 5
Performance Evaluation

This chapter deals with the setup of the evaluation and the factors used for the
evaluating performance of the signature verification system.

5.1 Setup of the Evaluation

For evaluating the signature verification system a database of genuine and test
signatures are required. The database of handwritten signatures are obtained
from publicly available database called MCYT-100 from Biometric Recognition
Group-ATVS. The database consists of genuine and forgery signatures of 100
users. Each target user produces 25 genuine signatures, and 25 skilled forgeries
are also captured for each user. Since the acquisition of each on-line signature
is accomplished dynamically, a graphics tablet is needed: the acquisition device
used is a WACOM pen tablet, model INTUOS A6 USB. The genuine signatures
are represented as reference signatures, how many references signatures we need
will depends on the user. For test signature we can use either genuine or forgery
signature. The signatures and their features are shown in the figure 5.1. figure
5.1(a) and 5.1(b) is the genuine signature and its features, figure 5.1(c) and 5.1(d)
is the forgery signature and its features. After obtaining the reference and test
signatures, a set of features are derived from the model based classifier i.e., GMM
and similarity is measured using the LCSS and DTW. The similarity scores are
used to determine whether the signature is genuine or forgery. The obtained
scores are useful for evaluating the performance of the system.

22
Chapter 5. Performance Evaluation 23

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

Figure 5.1: a) Genuine signature b) Features of Genuine signature c) Forgery

signature d) Features of Forgery signature. These signatures are from MCYT-
100 signature database.
Chapter 5. Performance Evaluation 24

5.2 Performance Evaluation Factors

The efficiency of a signature verification and recognition system, is expressed in
terms of two error rates: the Type I error rate and Type II error rate, which are
also known as the FRR and FAR respectively. The performance is also measured
in terms of ERR and ROC curves. [15][16]. So, the performance is evaluated
using the following factors,

• FAR

• FRR

• EER

• ROC Curve

FAR
The false accept rate is the percentage of invalid inputs that are incorrectly ac-
cepted (match between input and a non-matching template),

T otal number of imposter signatures accepted as genuine

F AR = . (5.1)
T otal number of f orgery tests perf ormed
FRR
The false reject rate is the percentage of valid inputs that are incorrectly rejected
(fails to detect a match between input and matching template),

T otal number of genuine signatures rejected as imposters

F RR = . (5.2)
T otal number of Genuinematching tests perf ormed

EER
The EER indicates the accuracy of the system. The false accept rate and false
reject rate intersect at a certain point which is called the EER (the point in which
the FAR and FRR have the same value).
In theory, the correct users should always score higher than the impostors. A
single threshold could then be used to separate the correct user from the impos-
tors. In general, the matching algorithm performs a decision based on a threshold
which determines how close to a template the input needs to be for it to be con-
sidered a match. If the threshold is reduced, there will be less false non-matches
but more false accepts. Correspondingly, a higher threshold will reduce the false
accept rating but increase the false reject rating.In some cases impostor patterns
generate scores that are higher than the patterns from the user.For that reason
that however the threshold is chosen, some classification errors occur.
Chapter 5. Performance Evaluation 25

Figure 5.2: FAR and FRR of a bio-metric verification system

ROC Curve
In statistics, a receiver operating characteristic curve, i.e. ROC curve, is a graph-
ical plot that illustrates the diagnostic ability of a binary classifier system as its
discrimination threshold is varied.
The ROC curve is created by plotting the TPR against the FPR at various
threshold settings. Let us consider a two-class prediction problem (binary classi-
fication), in which the outcomes are labeled either as positive (p) or negative (n).
There are four possible outcomes from a binary classifier. If the outcome from a
prediction is p and the actual value is also p, then it is called a TP; however if
the actual value is n then it is said to be a FP. Conversely, a TN has occurred
when both the prediction outcome and the actual value are n, and FN is when
the prediction outcome is n while the actual value is p.

ROC analysis provides tools to select possibly optimal models and to discard
sub-optimal ones independently from (and prior to specifying) the cost context
or the class distribution. ROC analysis is related in a direct and natural way to
cost/benefit analysis of diagnostic decision making.
Chapter 5. Performance Evaluation 26

Figure 5.3: ROC Curve created by plotting the TPR against the FPR at various
threshold settings
Chapter 6
Results and Discussion

This chapter deals with the results and the effects of the results and also deals
with the answers to the research questions and problem faced during the imple-
mentation.

6.1 Results
The experiment is conducted on 25 genuine signatures and 25 forgery signatures
with 5 genuine signatures taken as reference signatures. The performance metric
curves FAR, FRR and ROC curves are shown in the below figures. There are
also tables showing the FAR and FRR percentage values for different threshold
values for both combinations of GMM-LCSS and GMM-DTW.

6.1.1 FAR and FRR

The table 6.1 shows the false acceptance rate for both combinations of GMM-
LCSS and GMM-DTW. From the table 6.1, it can be shown that percentage
of false acceptance that means the system accepts signatures as genuine which
actually not genuine. For this case imposter signatures i.e., forgery signatures
are given as input to the system. The tables shows the percentages values for
different thresholds and for both combinations percentage values are same till 0.6
threshold and after 0.6 the combination GMM-DTW achieved better results with
small difference. The table 6.2 shows the FRR for both combinations of GMM-
LCSS and GMM-DTW. From the table 6.2, it can be shown that percentage of
false rejection that means the system rejects signatures considering not genuine
which actually genuine. For this only genuine signatures are given as input to
the system. The tables shows the percentages values for different thresholds and
by comparing for both the combinations the combination GMM-LCSS achieved
better results i.e., it has low FRR when compared to GMM-DTW.

27
Chapter 6. Results and Discussion 28

Table 6.1: Table showing FAR percentage values for different thresholds for both
combinations GMM-LCSS and GMM-DTW
Threshold using LCSS—>FAR using DTW—>FAR
0.1 0.96 1
0.2 0.96 1
0.3 0.96 1
0.4 0.96 0.92
0.5 0.96 0.84
0.6 0.68 0.68
0.7 0.4 0.36
0.8 0.32 0.2
0.9 0.04 0.08

Table 6.2: Table showing FRR percentage values for different thresholds for both
combinations GMM-LCSS and GMM-DTW
Threshold using LCSS—>FRR using DTW—>FRR
0.1 0.04 0.16
0.2 0.04 0.16
0.3 0.04 0.2
0.4 0.04 0.2
0.5 0.08 0.28
0.6 0.2 0.6
0.7 0.4 0.76
0.8 0.52 0.92
0.9 0.94 1

The figure 6.1 and figure 6.2 are FAR and FRR curve plotted for different
threshold. The figure 6.1 showing the FAR curve for both combinations GMM-
DTW and GMM-LCSS. The two FAR curves are nearly same with small differ-
ence.The figure 6.2 showing the FRR curve for both combinations GMM-DTW
and GMM-LCSS. For combination GMM-LCSS the system obtained very good
curve compared to GMM-DTW.
Chapter 6. Results and Discussion 29

Figure 6.1: Plot showing FAR curves for both combinations GMM-LCSS and
GMM-DTW

Figure 6.2: Plot showing FRR curves for both combinations GMM-LCSS and
GMM-DTW

6.1.2 EER Curves

The performance of system is also evaluated using EER. EER indicates the ac-
curacy of the system. A single threshold must be chosen to separate the correct
user from the imposters. To know that single threshold we plot both FAR and
FRR curves where both intersect at certain point which is called as EER.
Chapter 6. Results and Discussion 30

Figure 6.3: Plot showing FAR and FRR curves for combination GMM-LCSS

The figure 6.3 shows the plot for FAR and FRR curves for combination GMM-
LCSS. from the plot the two curves intersect at threshold 0.69 where the equal
error rate is 0.4. The figure 6.4 shows the plot for FAR and FRR curves for

Figure 6.4: Plot showing FAR and FRR curves for combination GMM-DTW

combination GMM-DTW. from the plot the two curves intersect at 0.61 where
equal error rate is 0.6.From both EER curves GMM-LCSS has low EER when
compared to GMM-DTW.
Chapter 6. Results and Discussion 31

6.1.3 ROC Curve

To know whether the classifier model is good or bad ROC curve must be created.
The ROC curve is created by plotting the TPR against the FPR at various
threshold setting.

Figure 6.5: Plot showing ROC curve for combination GMM-LCSS

If the input is given a genuine signature and output obtained as positive i.e.,
signature is genuine, then it’s called a TP. If the input is given a forgery signature
and output obtained as negative i.e., signature is not genuine, then it’s a FP. The
example of ROC curve is shown in figure 5.3.

Figure 6.6: Plot showing ROC curve for combination GMM-DTW

The figure 6.5, figure 6.6, are the ROC curves obtained at various threshold levels.
To judge whether the classifier model is good or bad the ROC curve must be in
straight line and also without any variations.
Chapter 6. Results and Discussion 32

Figure 6.7: Plot showing the comparison of ROC curves for both combinations
GMM-LCSS and GMM-DTW

From figure 6.7. the model GMM-LCSS has good curve compared to the model
GMM-DTW because GMM-LCSS has straight curve and also the starts early
when compared to GMM-DTW.

6.2 Discussion
6.2.1 Answers to Research Questions
Research Question 1: What are the former methods used for Online
Signature Verification?
Answer: Many methods are proposed for signature verification since past three
decades. Global features based and local features are the two strategies which
are used to extract the relevant information/features from the signatures. These
features are discussed in section 3.3. Model based approach and distance based
approach are the classifier methodologies which are used for signature verifica-
tion. In model based approach, HMM, MLP, SVM and other NN models are
used to build a statistical profile of signature and evaluate the relation of the
features which are used in making decision. In distance based approach, most
widely used technique is DTW which aligns the sample points of two signatures
having different lengths. Other matching algorithms include LCSS, Edit Distance
and also classical distance computation techniques like Euclidean and City Block.
Chapter 6. Results and Discussion 33

Research Question 2: How LCSS algorithm is better when compared

to DTW matching algorithm?
Answer: The results contain comparing the two classifier models GMM-LCSS
and GMM-DTW. From experiments results it can be stated that LCSS algo-
rithm is better when compared to DTW matching algorithm. All sample points
are matched in DTW where the outlines can distort the distance. In case of
LCSS, Outlying values are not matched so, distance/similarity is distorted less
i.e., noise is cancelled. The algorithms are discussed in section 4.

Research Question 3: How many genuine signatures are needed to

train a reliable GMM-LCSS classifier?
Answer: The classifier model must be trained with certain number of genuine
signatures in order to have reliable verification. The number of genuine signatures
necessary to train classifier is very important in real world application. Number
of signatures depends on specific application, but usually number is expected to
be small like starting from three and also choosing the number depends on user.
For GMM-LCSS and GMM-DTW, classifier is trained using three to ten number
of genuine signatures. If the classifier is trained with more signatures the better
is the reliability of the verification.

Research Question 4: Can LCSS be used in combination with other

classification models?
Answer: Yes, comparison techniques or distanced based approaches LCSS, DTW
can used in combination with the model based approaches or classifier models like
HMM, MLP, SVM and other NN models. If more features are extracted which
can be separated by classifier model, if the classifier is efficient we can achieve a
reliable verification.

6.2.2 Problems faced during implementation

During implementation of the system, to get the performance curves the system
need to be tested with the available 25 genuine and 25 forgery signatures. It
took hours of time to test with each test signatures and store the score values.
This became a major problem. So, to solve this problem, a Matlab function is
created with all the test signatures. After creating it became easy to calculate the
performance curves with just one click on the run button. The work was totally
implemented in Matlab R2016b software.

Another problem faced during implementation is the time taken for the executing
the matlab script. Since the signature data is large and also the testing it with
reference signature became a time consuming factor.
Chapter 7
Conclusion and Future Work

7.1 Conclusion
A system for online HSV system is implemented. At various threshold values the
performance of verification system is evaluated. The aim of the work is to propose
a new approach for online signature verification system and also to evaluate the
performance by comparing with the mostly widely used technique for comparison
of two sequences i.e., DTW in the bio-metric verification. The performance of sys-
tem is evaluated by calculating FAR, FRR, EER and ROC curves. GMM-LCSS,
is able to authenticate persons very reliably even if only five genuine signatures
are used for training. It turned out that the LCSS-based similarity assessment of
online signature data performance is matching with the DTW-based technique.
GMM-LCSS provides more security because its FAR is low compared to GMM-
DTW. Equal Error rate is low i.e., 0.4 for GMM-LCSS model when compared
Equal Error rate i.e., 0.6 GMM-DTW model. From ROC curve, it is known that
GMM-LCSS is efficient classifier compared to GMM-DTW.One main difference
of LCSS and DTW is that in LCSS distance is less distorted because outlying
values are ignored and in DTW distance is distorted because outlying values are
matched. Finally, Our experiments shown that GMM with the LCSS authenti-
cate persons very reliably and with performance better and matching with best
comparing technique, DTW with small equal error rate difference.

7.2 Future Work

The future work should address the challenges and issues involved in online sig-
nature verification and there is always a scope for new approach which may im-
prove the performance,the future works may involved in exploring new features
and new approaches which may be more effective in distinguishing forgeries from
genuine signatures. There is a scope for reducing number of signatures required
for training the model for reliable authentication. Comparison techniques LCSS
and DTW can be used in combinations with other classifier models like HMM,

34
Chapter 7. Conclusion and Future Work 35

MLP model, SVM and other NN models. These classifier models can also be used
in combination with other distance based approaches like edit distance, euclidean,
city block distance computation techniques.
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