Skip to main content
Log in

A wavelet feature extraction method for electrocardiogram (ECG)-based biometric recognition

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Signal, Image and Video Processing Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper proposes a discrete wavelet feature extraction method for an electrocardiogram (ECG)-based biometric system. In this method, the RR intervals are extracted and decomposed using discrete biorthogonal wavelet in wavelet coefficient structures. These structures are reduced by excluding the non-informative coefficients, and then, they are fed into a radial basis functions (RBF) neural network for classification. Moreover, the ability of using only the QT or QRS intervals instead of the RR intervals is also investigated. Finally, the results achieved by our method outperformed the auto-correlation (AC)/discrete cosine transform (DCT) method where the DCT coefficients are derived from the AC of ECG segments and fed into the RBF network for classification. The conducted experiments were validated using four Physionet databases. Critical issues like stability overtime, the ability to reject impostors, scalability and generalization to other datasets have also been addressed.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Wang, Y., Agrafioti, F., Hatzinakos, D., Plataniotis K.: Analysis of human electrocardiogram for biometric recognition. EURASIP J. Adv. Signal Process. Article ID 148658. doi:10.1155/2008/148658 (2008)

  2. Sufi, F., Khalil, I., Hu, J.: ECG based authentication. In: Stavroulakis, P., Stamp, M. (eds.) Handbook of Information and Communication Security, pp. 309–331. Springer, Berlin (2010)

  3. Agrafioti, F., Gao, J., Hatzinakos, D.: Heart biometrics: theory, methods and applications. Biometrics Book 3, 199–216 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Forsen, G., Nelson, M., Staron, R.: Personal attributes authentication techniques. In: Griffin, A.F.B. (ed.) Rome Air Development Center Report RADC-TR-77-1033. RADC, New York (1977)

  5. Mitchel, T.: Machine Learning, 2nd edn. McGraw-Hill, New York (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Haykin, S.: Neural Networks: A Comprehensive Foundation, 2nd edn. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River (1999)

  7. Oeff, M., Koch, H., Bousseljot, R., Kreiseler, D.: The PTB Diagnostic ECG Database. National Metrology Institute of Germany. http://www.physionet.org/physiobank/database/ptbdb/. Accessed 22 Feb 2013

  8. The MIT-BIH Normal Sinus Rhythm Database: http://www.physionet.org/physiobank/database/nsrdb/. Accessed 22 Feb 2013

  9. The MIT\_BIH Long Term Database: http://www.physionet.org/physiobank/database/ltdb/. Accessed 22 Feb 2013

  10. The Fantasia Database: http://www.physionet.org/physiobank/database/fantasia/. Accessed 22 Feb 2013

  11. Tantawi, M., Revett, K., Tolba, M.F., Salem, A.: Fiducial feature reduction analysis for electrocardiogram (ECG) based biometric recognition. Int. J. Intell. Inf. Syst. 40(1), 17–39 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Tantawi, M., Revett, K., Tolba, M.F., Salem, A.: On the applicability of the physionet electro-cardiogram (ECG) repository as a source of test cases for ECG based biometrics. Int. J. Cogn. Biometrics 1(1), 66–97 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Tantawi, M., Revett, K., Tolba, M.F., Salem, A.: A novel feature set for deployment in ECG based biometrics. In: Proceedings of the 7th IEEE Conference on Computer Engineering and Systems (ICCES), Egypt, pp. 186–191 (2012)

  14. Israel, S.A., Irvine, J.M., Cheng, A., Wiederhold, M.D., Wiederhold, K.: ECG to identify individuals. J. Pattern Recognit. 38(1), 133–142 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Shen, T., Tompkins, W., Hu, Y.: One-lead ECG for identity verification. In: Proceedings of the 2nd Joint Conference on EMBS/ BMES, Houston (2002)

  16. Shen, T.W.: Biometric Identity Verification Based on Electrocardiogram (ECG). Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison (2005)

  17. Gahi, Y., Lamrani, A., Zoglat, A., Guennoun, M., Kapralos, B., El-Khatib, K.: Biometric identification system based on electrocardiogram data. In: New Technologies, Mobility and Security (NTMS ’08), pp. 1–5 (2008)

  18. Fatemian, S., Hatzinakos, D.: A new ECG feature extractor for biometric recognition. In: Proceedings of the 16th Annual International Conference on Digital Signal Processing, vol. 3, pp. 323–328. IEEE Press, Piscataway (2009)

  19. Mai, V., Khalil, I., Meli, C.: ECG biometric using multilayer perceptron and radial basis function neural networks. In: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE EMBS, pp. 2745–2748, Boston, USA (2011)

  20. Wao, J., Wan, Y.: Improving computing efficiency of a wavelet method using ECG as a biometric modality. Int. J. Comput. Netw. Secur. 2(1), 15–20 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Chan, A., Hamdy, M., Badre, A., Badee, V.: Wavelet distance measure for person identification using electrocardiograms. Proc. IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas. 37(2), 248–253 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Chan, A., Hamdy, M., Badre, A., Badee, V.: Person identification using electrocardiograms. Proc. IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas. 57(2), 248–253 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Yao, J., Wan, Y.: A wavelet method for biometric identification using wearable ECG sensors. In: Presented at the 5th International Workshop on Wearable and Implantable Body Sensor Networks, pp. 297–300, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. doi:10.1109/ISSMDBS.2008.4575078 (2008)

  24. Wan, Y., Yao, J.: A neural network to identify human subjects with electrocardiogram signals. In: Presented at the World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science, San Francisco, USA. doi:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.148.5220 (2008)

  25. Chiu, C., Chuang, C., Hsu, C.: A novel personal identity verification approach using a discrete wavelet transform of the ECG signal. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Multimedia and Ubiquitous Engineering, Washington, DC, USA, pp. 201–206 (2008)

  26. Belgacem, N., Ali, A., Fournier, R., Bereksi-Reguig, F.: ECG based human authentication using wavelets and random forests. Int. J. Cryptogr. Inf. Secur. (IJCIS) 2, 1–11 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Loong, J., Subari, K., Besar, R., Abdullah, M.: A new approach to ECG biometric systems: a comparative study between LPC and WPD Systems. In: Proceedings of the World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, vol. 68, pp. 759–764 (2010)

  28. Tawfik, M., Selim, H., Kamal, T.: Human identification using time normalized QT signal and the QRS complex of the ECG. In: Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Communication Systems Networks and Digital Signal Processing, pp. 755–759 (2010)

  29. Sufi, F., Khalil, I., Habib, I.: Polynomial distance measurement for ECG based biometric authentication. Secur. Commun. Netw. 3(4), 303–319 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Coutinho, D., Fred, A., Figueiredo, M.: One-lead ECG-based personal identification using Ziv–Merhav cross parsing. In: Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Istanbul, Turkey, pp. 3858–3861 (2010)

  31. Ghofrani, N., Bostani, R.: Reliable features for an ECG-based biometric system. In: Proceedings of the 17th Iranian Conference of Biomedical Engineering, pp. 1–5 (2010)

  32. Odinaka, I., Lai, P.H., Kaplan, A., O’Sullivan, J., Sirevaag, E., Kristjansson, S., Sheffield, A., Rohrbaugh, J.: ECG biometrics: a robust short-time frequency analysis. In: IEEE International Workshop on Inf. Forensics and Security, pp. 1–6 (2010)

  33. Venkatesh, N., Jayaraman, S.: Human electrocardiogram for biometrics using DTW and FLDA. In: Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR), pp. 3838–3841, Istanbul, Turkey (2010)

  34. Safie, S., Soraghan, J., Petropoulakis, L.: Electrocardiogram (ECG) biometric authentication using pulse active ratio (PAR). IEEE Trans. Inf. Forensic Secur. 6(4), 1315–1322 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Pan, J., Tompkins, W.: A real time QRS detection algorithm. Proc. IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng. 33(3), 230–236 (1985)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Misiti, M., Misiti, Y., Oppenheim, G., Poggi, J.: Wavelet Toolbox 4 User Guide, 4.1 edn. The MathWorks, Inc., Natick (2007)

  37. Chen, S., Chng, E.: Regularized orthogonal least squares algorithm for constructing radial basis function networks. Int. J. Control 64(5), 829–837 (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  38. Revett, K.: Behavioral Biometrics: A Remote Access Approach. Wiley, New York. ISBN: 78-0-470-518830 (2008)

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Manal M. Tantawi.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Tantawi, M.M., Revett, K., Salem, AB. et al. A wavelet feature extraction method for electrocardiogram (ECG)-based biometric recognition. SIViP 9, 1271–1280 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-013-0568-5

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-013-0568-5

Keywords

Navigation