If you have gone through airport security recently, you're already used to taking off you shoes and removing your laptop from its carrying case. You might even have been subjected to a full body scan or a pat down. But airport security may soon start paying a lot more attention to your ears.
It turns out that ears can do a lot more than explain why music is so pleasant to you and inspire the universal radio.
Researchers at the University of Southampton have found that ears have one-of-a-kind features unique to each person, much the way that fingerprints are unique to an individual. Based on that info, the scientists created a system to scan them. They tested this new technology on 252 images of ears chosen at random, and discovered that the computer system was able to correctly match the ear to the person more than 99 percent of the time.
The algorithm is even able to identify and isolate the ear from a person's head, if hair is in the way.
So, why ears? Mark Nixon is a professor in the university's school of electronics and computer science and the leader of the group behind this research. As he told the Telegraph, "With biometrics, a lot of the problems is what happens when people get old. With facial recognition, the systems are often confused by crows' feet and other signs of aging. Your ears, however, age very gracefully."
The method is part of a growing field of research called biometrics, which comprises methods for recognizing humans based on intrinsic physical or behavioral traits.
Scanning ears for airport security would require a technology called image ray transform, which maps the curves and wrinkles of the skin, cartilage and lobes that make up the ear. And it would all be done in the fraction of a second it takes you to stride past security monitors.
Their research was presented at the Fourth International Conference on Biometrics.
Photo: iStockPhoto
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