Automatic person authentication, the identification and verification of an individual as such, has increasingly been acknowledged as a significant aspect of various security applications. Various recognition and identification systems have been based on biometrics utilizing biometric features such as fingerprint, face, retina scans, iris patterns, hand geometry, DNA traces, gait, and others.

This book originates from an international summer school on biometrics, held in Alghero, Italy, in June 2003. The seven revised tutorial lectures by leading researchers introduce the reader to biometrics-based person authentication, fingerprint recognition, gait recognition, various aspects of face recognition and face detection, topologies for biometric recognition, and hand detection. Also included are the four best selected student papers, all dealing with face recognition.