International Symposium’on Signal Processing and its Applications (ISSPA), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 13 - I6 August. 2001.
Organized by
the Dept. of Microelectronics and Computer Engineering, UTM, Malaysia and Signal Processing Research Centre, QUT, Australia
ON-LINE SIGNATURE VERIFICATION SYSTEM
USING PROBABILISTIC FEATURE MODELLING
G. K Kiran, R. Srinivasa Rao Kunte
J.N.N College of Engineering
Shimoga, India
kiran_gv@vsnl.com jnnce-ecd@vsnl. com
ABSTRACT
Signature verification is a popular biometric authentication
technique. Although the use of other biometrics like retinal
pattems and fingerprints are quite prevalent, they are not
simple methods. With the development of very handy
digitizer tablets, signatures can be captured on-line and
can be processed for verification. Since signatures of the
same person can vary with time and state of mind, it is
necessary to develop an efficient signature verification
system. We have proposed in this paper a signature
verification system which extracts certain dynamic
features derived from velocity and acceleration of the pen
together with other global parameters like total time taken,
number of pen-ups. The features are modeled by fitting
probability density functions i.e., by estimating the mean
and variance, which could probably take care of the
variations of the features of the signatures of the same
person with respect to time and state of mind.
1. INTRODUCTION
Signature verification has till date remained an
increasingly attractive biometric method for person
identification and verification. Although the use of other
biometrics like retinal pattems or fingerprht pattems,
which are very unique to each individual, are on the rise, a
few factors have undermined their universal and
widespread commercial utility for low-end use. For
instance, the obtaining of retinal patterns of individual
under test is often seen as intrusive while also the
equipment needed to obtain these biometrics may be too
complex and expensive for large scale deployment. On the
other hand, a flurry of developments in the field of
transducers and general technology have resulted in the
availability of rather simple, inexpensive yet highly
effective pen based devices like graphic tablets which can
give the position of the pen in X-Y coordinates, pressure at
the tip of the pen, and sometimes pen-tilt with respect to
the horizontal. These graphic tablets can be easily
interfaced with any desktop personal computer.
Handwritten signatures, after a little practice, can be put
down by users on such graphic tablets and can be
processed by the applications running on the PC.
0-7803-6703-0/01/$IO.006??001IEEE
Sudhaker Samuel
S.J.College of Engineering
Mysore, India.
sudhakersamuel@yahoo.com
Furthermore, since a very large percentage of the day-to-
day financial transactions are normally carried out on the
basis of verification of signatures, one finds enough
motivation in trying to design a system that verifies
handwritten signatures in near real-time and with
reasonable confidence. What makes the study of
signatures all the more interesting is that unlike retinal
pattems or fingerprints which are an unmistakable part of
one’s anatomy, the signatures are learnt, practiced and
have evolved over a period of time which is one of the
reason why the signatures can be duplicated by a forger to
any reasonable degree of success.
Signature verification generally falls into two categories,
off-line (static) and on-line (dynamic) signature
verification systems [I]. In the off-line systems the
signature is obtained on an ordinary piece of writing paper
which is then scanned to obtain an image in any one of the
standard PC formats. Here the problem of signature
verification is translated into a more general form of a
problem in image analysis. After some initial pre-
processing many of the techniques and algorithms used in
character or shape recognition are then employed to verify
the signature. The major disadvantage of such a method is
that the dynamics of the signature (varying signature
features as the signature is executed) are not captured so
that it is relatively easy for a person to remember the
general shape and style of the strokes of the signature of
another individual and then to forge the signature.
In on-line verification systems, the pen based tablet
systems are used to obtain a sequence of X-Y coordinates
and pressure of the pen (quantised to a certain number of
bits) as the signature is made on the surface of the tablet.
This sequence of X-Y coordinates is then analysed to
obtain the velocity, acceleration, distance traveled and
other profiles of the signature.
The signature of a person, which more often than not is the
name of the individual written in a manner that is unique
to the individual, is a process that is learnt, practiced and
perfected over a period of time. The handwritten signature
has been thought of as ballistic in nature with the message
commands from the central nervous system to the muscles
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 International Symposium on Signal Processing and its Applications (ISSPA), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 13 - 16 August, 2001. Organized by
the Dept. of Microelectronicsand Computer Engineering, UTM, Malaysia and Signal Processing Research Centre, QUT, Australia
being played out in a sequence with little or no feedback.
That is, it is indeed very rare to find a person pausing in
the midst of a signature only to look at the signature and
see if it was coming good and then continuing with it
again and finishing the signature. Thus the velocity profile
of the signature, the acceleration characteristics of the pen
and the total time taken from start to finish are all unique
characteristics of an individual’s signature. Even if the
forger takes. great pain in remembering the styles and
contours of the strokes, it is extremely unlikely that he
would be able to match the velocity profile or any other
dynamic characteristics of the original signature. Thus, in
being able to capture the dynamics of the signature on-line
signature verification goes one step ahead in addressing
the problem of signature verification.
Some of the various approaches of on-line verification
systems as reported in literature are as follows:
The velocity and pressure waveforms of the pen are
treated as continuous functions of time (or discrete
version of a continuous hnction). Then, techniques
such as Dynamic Time Warping (DTW, used
extensively in speech recognition), which take care of
time alignment are used to compare the reference
template and the test signature [ 1][2].
The signatures are segmented into words based on the
zero velocity points ,in the velocity curve and then
DTW or other techniques are used to compare the
different segments to determine the similarity or
otherwise of the test and reference signatures [3].
Hidden Markov Models (HMh4, a technique used
extensively in speech recognition) have also been
applied to the word segments [4].
The velocity and pressure waveforms are reduced to a
set of features like the number of times the velocity
becomes zero, or the number of times the first
derivative of the velocity (acceleration) crosses the
zero axis etc. These features are combined with other
global features like the total time taken or the total
distance traveled. The comparison is then
accomplished by using the mathematical norm or by
using other well established techniques like neural
networks etc [5].
2. SYSTEM METHODOLOGY
In our proposed system, the typical enrolling process of a
new user begins with the user putting down the signature
above a horizontal reference line in a relaxed manner.
About 5 to 10 of his (or her) specimen signatures are
obtained and then certain features, to be explained later,
are extracted from his signatures and a reference set
.(typically called a database) is built up. Later, when the
same us& (or someone claiming to be that particular user)
presents himself for authentication, the features extracted
from his test signature are compared with that of the
features in the reference set belonging to that particular
person under test. If the signature has indeed come from
the original user, then the comparison process will yield a
356
higher similarity score. While on the other hand, an
attempt at forgery will yield a lower similarity score.
The features used for signature verification in our system
are indeed the features that have been widely studied and
written upon in literature such as total time taken in doing
the signature, total distance traveled by the pen, number of
zeros in the velocity and pressure curves etc. (more details
follow in the subsequent sections). A different approach
has been proposed and used for the comparison of the
reference and the test signatures. A probability density
function, Gaussian in this case, is used in modeling the
clustering of the features. That is, a density function is
parametrically fitted (or estimated) to each feature using
all the specimen signatures of a person. In the process of
estimation, the mean and variance for each of the features
are calculated and used as the representatives of the
signature for identification. During the testing phase (or
authentication), the probability score obtained by fitting
the test feature data to the estimated reference values is
accumulated over all the features. A decision is then taken
on the basis of this accumulated score about the
authenticity of the signature under question.
The graphic tablet used in our experiments comes
with a 5”x 5” pad, cordless pen (stylus) and 256 levels of
pressure sensing of the tip of the stylus. Every time the
pen moves, the software drivers report the X-Y
coordinates and the pressure of the contact of the pen. To
enable us to perform the velocity and acceleration
calculations we also store the PC system time along with
the X-Y coordinates and pressure. Also, the number of
pen-ups during the signature is noted.
2.1 Features
We are proposing to extract the following features fiom
the signature for verification:
1. The number of zeros in the velocity in X direction.
2. The number of zeros in the velocity in Y direction.
(or instead of the zeros it could be values that are a
very small percentage of the peak values)
3. The number of zero crossings in the acceleration in the
X direction.
4. The number of zero crossings in the acceleration in the
Y direction. (These zero crossings indicate the change
from increasing to decreasing velocity or from
decreasing to increasing velocity).
5. Total time taken in performing the signature.
6 . Total distance traveled by the pen. This is the sum of
all the euclidean distances between all the points,
D = C { (Xi-Xi+l)2+(Yi-Yi+~)2}I‘
Where the summation in the previous expression runs
from i = 0 to N-1.
7. Total number of pen-ups (including or excluding the
final pen-up).
8. Total pen-up time, which is the total time for which the
pen was up.
9. The number of times the pressure goes above an upper
threshold T,...and
 I
International Symposium on Signal Processing and its Applications (ISSPA), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 13 - 16 August, 2001. Organized by
the Dept. of Microelectronics and Computer Engineering, UTM,Malaysia and Signal Processing Research Centre, QUZ Austruliu

10. The number of times the pressure falls below a lower 2.2 Feature Modeling:
threshold T,,. (Thresholds can be a certain percentage
of the peak value). During the process of enrolling of a new user a number of
signatures, typically between 10 to 20 (the more the better)
The velocity or the speed, which changes as a function of are obtained over a period of time (we refrained fiom
time, can be calculated as the first derivative of forcing the subjects to do all the signatures in one sitting).
displacement as: The features, as mentioned in the previous section, are
VXm= ( X m + l - X m ) / ( t m+l - t m ) ’. (2) obtained for each of the sample signatures. If there are 20
’ Vym= ( Ym+l - Y m ) / ( t m+l - t m ) .’ (3) sample signatures, then, 20 sets of feature vectors each
containing 10 proposed features are extracted.
Which are the velocity in the X and Y directions
respectively at time t m. During the course of building our system we ncticed that
the handwritten signatures tend to vary a great deal
The acceleration can be calculated as the first derivative of depending on the mental state, the surroundings in which
velocity, and thus we would have for the acceleration in he is made to sign, the time period over which he is made
the X and Y direction at time t ,,: to sign and sometimes also the specific reason for which
he is to sign. So, most of the features like the total time
taken, the total distance traveled, time between pen-ups
tend to vary, from one signature to the other of the same
person, about a mean value with a certain variance that is
As an example, Fig. 1 shows a sample signature and the uniquely characteristic to a certain individual (that is, the
corresponding velocity plot and the acceleration plot are feature values are tend to be found clustered about a mean
shown in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 respectively for reference. value). It is this observation that prompted us to think
about fitting disributions to these features. It has been
For each of the 10 features listed above, the mean and observed that of all the mathematical distributions the
variance are estimated over all the sample specimen Gaussian density finction best models most of the
signatures. The details of which follow in the next section. processes that are observed in nature. The mean gives us
an idea of the value around which the clustering takes
place while the variance is an indicator of how big or
small the cluster is spread in feature space (smaller the
variance smailer is the cluster and likewise). Since N
signatures give us N values of a particular feature (like N
total time taken), we try to fit a Gaussian density function
to these values and in doing so estimate the mean and
variance that parametrically define the distribution. The
unbiased estimator for the mean is,
Fig. 1 A sample signature. I =N
pk =ZX, / N .‘ (6)
i= 1
where the XI ‘s are the feature values.
The unbiased estimator for the variance is,
I =N
Vark= Z ( X, - pk)* / ( N-1 ) .. (7)
i= 1
where k varies from 1 to the number of features
i.e., IO.
Fig. 2 The velocity of the pen tip as a function of time for
the sample signature in Fig. 1 As a simple numerical example, let us consider that there
are 4 specimen signatures of an individual and two
features, namely total time taken and number of pen-ups
are extracted from the signature.
Sig 1 - 4.234 sec and 5 pen-ups
Sig 2 - 4.623 sec and 6 pen-ups
Sig 3 - 4.555 sec and 4 pen-ups
Sig 4 - 4.772 sec and 5 pen-ups
The mean of feature 1 (time taken) is 4.546 sec and its
, , w
- I
J..
dv
L .._- -
- .
- --J---- -1 ,
variance is- -
0.051477, while @at of feature 2 (number of
E ?E (a! ?VI ‘ill t4l.
pen-ups) is 5 and 0.666 respectively. So, for this particular
’ Fig. 3 The acceleration of the pen tip as a function of time user with 4 specimen signatures the reference template is
for the sample signature in Fig. 1 (4.546, 0.05 1477), (5, 0.666).

357
 International Symposium on Signal Processing and its Applications (ISSPA). Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 13 - 16 August, 2001. Organized by
the Dept. of Microelectronics and Computer Engineering, WTM, Malaysia and Signal Processing Research Centre, QUT, Australia
Thus we have, for a given individual, a mean and variance
( p k , var k ) that describes the behaviour of a particular
feature. For a IO featured system we have:
(p I, var I 1, ( p~ I var 2 1, ( p 3 , var3 1, ... ( PIO,
var I O )
This is computed for every user in the system. So, when a
user’s authenticity has to be verified, the set of qean and
variance reference value corresponding to the user in test
has to be used in verifying the claim.
2.3 Verification
When a request is made to authenticate a given user, the
claimant is asked to sign above the horizontal reference
line. From this signature, the same features as mentioned
before are extracted and a feature vector built up. The
values of the features of this test signature are then
substituted into the equation defining the Gaussian density
function of mean and variance ( p ,var ) i.e.,
P(X,) = e ~ p [ - ( X , - p , ) ~ / ( 2 v a r , ) ] / d2(1 ~ v a r , ) ..(8)
where P( X, ) is the score the particular feature XI
generates. (Here it is noted that in defining the density
function the probability of a variable taking a particular
value is zero!).
From the above equation, it is evident that closer the value
of XIto the mean, as dictated by the variance, greater will
be the score geflerated. The above equation is evaluated
over all the features (the variable i is run from 1 to 10) and
a probability score PS is generated given by:
I =IO
PS = z P( X I )
I= I
.. (9)
After the mean and variance of each feature is estimated, a
quantity called the threshold is estimated. To estimate the
threshold the specimen signatures are treated as test
signatures and the features are then substituted into the
defining equation (8) and the probability score PS is
calculated over all the features. This is repeated over the
whole set of sample signatures and the average of all the
probability scores obtained can serve as a good measure of
the threshold.
If the accumulated score PS is equal to or greater than the
threshold, then the signature is verified as authentic while
if it is less than the threshold then it is declared as forged.
If one desires a slightly lighter threshold then it can be set
at a smaller percentage of the average.
As a numerical example, let us consider the reference
template of mean and variances of the previous example
for a user i.e., (4.546,0.051477), (5, 0.666). Now, let there
be a forgery and an authentic signature where the forgery
has the feature values of 5.2 sec total time and 6 pen-ups
while the genuine signature has values of 4.6 sec and 5
respectively. Using the equation (8) for P( Xi ) as
explained above with the given mean and variance, the
forgery yields a score of 0.02758 for the first feature and
358
0.23089 for the second and so a total score of 0.258477.
The genuine sigqature gives a score of 1.7092 for the first
feature while the second feature gives a ,score of 0.48886
for a total of 2.1978. This score of the genuine signame
will be probably above the set threshold.
3. CONCLUSION
This system was tried on a set of 5 users with about 25
reference signatures for each individual. As no expert
forgers (signature analysis experts) were available we had
to do with each other duplicating each other’s signature.
Initial results have proved quite encouraging, inspite of the
fact that the users who tested the system knew what
features the system was looking at. About 95%
verification (rejecting forgeries) was obtained in these
cases. It is expected that this system will give much better
results if tested on subjects who have no inkling about the
features of the signature that the system is looking out for.
The proposed system promises a very simple yet reliable
solution to the problem of signature verification. The only
problem perhaps might be the need to use a lot of
reference signatures, but any even-minded individual
should comply with the necessity of putting down a few
signatures. But a lot of testing and refinement in terms of
the features need to be done before the system can be
projected with any reasonab!e degree of confidence.
5. REFERENCES
[l] R: Plamondon and G. Lorette (1989), “Automatic
Signature Verification and Writer Identification: The
State of the Art”, Pattern Recognition, vol 22, pp.
107-131.
[2] R.Martens and LClaesen, “Dynamic Programming
Optimisation for &-Line Signature Verification”,
Proceedings of ICDAR’97, pp. 653-656.
[3] Trevor Hastie and Eyal Kishon, and Jason Fan, “A
model for signature verification”, Technical Report
11214-91071.5-07TM,AT&T Bell Laboratories, July
1991.
[4] R.S.Kashi, J. Hu, W. L. Nelson and W. Turin, “On-
line Handwritten Signature Verification using Hidden
Markov Model features”, Proceedings of ICDAR ’97,
pp. 253-257.
[ 5 ] G. K. Gupta and R. C . Joyce (1997), “A Study of
Some Pen Motion Features in Dynamic Handwritten
Signature Verification”, Technical Report, Computer
Science Dept, James Cook University of North
Queensland.