Visual Feature-Guided Diamond Convolutional Network for Finger Vein Recognition

Finger vein (FV) biometrics have garnered considerable attention due to their inherent non-contact nature and high security, exhibiting tremendous potential in identity authentication and beyond. Nevertheless, challenges pertaining to the scarcity of training data and inconsistent image quality continue to impede the effectiveness of finger vein recognition (FVR) systems. To tackle these challenges, we introduce the visual feature-guided diamond convolutional network (dubbed 'VF-DCN'), a uniquely configured multi-scale and multi-orientation convolutional neural network. The VF-DCN showcases three pivotal innovations: Firstly, it meticulously tunes the convolutional kernels through multi-scale Log-Gabor filters. Secondly, it implements a distinctive diamond-shaped convolutional kernel architecture inspired by human visual perception. This design intelligently allocates more orientational filters to medium scales, which inherently carry richer information. In contrast, at extreme scales, the use of orientational filters is minimized to simulate the natural blurring of objects at extreme focal lengths. Thirdly, the network boasts a deliberate three-layer configuration and fully unsupervised training process, prioritizing simplicity and optimal performance. Extensive experiments are conducted on four FV databases, including MMCBNU_6000, FV_USM, HKPU, and ZSC_FV. The experimental results reveal that VF-DCN achieves remarkable improvement with equal error rates (EERs) of 0.17%, 0.19%, 2.11%, and 0.65%, respectively, and Accuracy Rates (ACC) of 100%, 99.97%, 98.92%, and 99.36%, respectively. These results indicate that, compared with some existing FVR approaches, the proposed VF-DCN not only achieves notable recognition accuracy but also shows fewer number of parameters and lower model complexity. Moreover, VF-DCN exhibits superior robustness across diverse FV databases.