Fingerprints may soon be a thing of the past as researchers were able to come up with a novel way of identifying people with 100 percent accuracy: brainprints.
People react to stimuli differently. For example, a person's brain waves exhibit different patterns when they are shown an image of a cake, a cow, a light bulb and so on. No two people react in the exact same manner and for this, researchers thought of exploring how this uniqueness can be applied to security and identification purposes.
Study lead author Sarah Laszlo from Binghamton University, says that when taking hundreds of varied pictures, where each individual elicits different feelings about each picture, the tendency is to definitely be accurate in determining which person looked at the images just by their brain waves.
Investigating The Uniqueness
For the study, the team looked into the brain activity of 50 participants who were asked to wear an electroencephalogram device over their heads to decode their brain activity.
The researchers showed the subjects 500 pictures, which were all made to draw out exclusive responses among different people. Among the images shown were a pizza slice, Anne Hathaway, a boat and the word "conundrum."
Indeed, the participants showed varied responses to each and every picture. The discrepancies were significant, that they were able to provide a computer system with sufficient data to determine each individual's "brainprint" with 100 percent accuracy.
High-Security Applications
The "brainprints" technology is not meant to be reproduced massively for low-security needs, at least in the near future, says study co-author Zhanpeng Jin.
Jin explains that the system is more inclined toward high-security settings, where there are only a few numbers of authorized users. These people are also said to be lift off of the constant authorization practices that ordinary people need to do when accessing their computers or mobile phones.
Go Flawless Or Forget
In 2015, the team conducted their first experiment regarding the same topic. In the said study, which used words, not images, the researchers were able to yield only 97 percent accuracy. More specifically, they were able to determine one out of the 32 participants.
Laszlo explains that the jump from 97 percent last year to 100 percent now is a huge progress. This is because this technology is geared toward high-security applications, thus, requiring perfection, precision and absolutely zero errors.
"You don't want to be 97 percent accurate for that, you want to be 100 percent accurate," says Laszlo.
Indeed, with potential for usage in high-profile areas like the Pentagon or Air Force Labs, flawless operations is a must.
Brain Biometrics
Brain biometrics is a particularly special field because data used to determine the identification of a person can neither be stolen nor cancelled. Brain waves are unlike the retina or fingerprint, which, as per modern technologies, may be copied or redeveloped.
Laszlo says if a fingerprint gets copied and reproduced, that person cannot just grow another finger and start over again. That person's fingerprint is compromised forever.
Brainprints are different because it is possibly cancellable. Hence, if in the interesting event that an attacker was able to steal a brainprint, the owner can just reset and create a brand new one.
The study was published in The IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security on April 12.
