A hypothesis is discussed concerning the use of echograms of the external auditory canal for personal identification. The authors have developed a device for measuring the acoustic parameters of the external auditory canal. Obtained echograms can be used as biometric patterns for identification and authentication of subjects. Two types of biometric parameters are considered based on spectral and cepstral analyses of echograms. The authors used two approaches for recognizing ear patterns: the first was based on Bayes' formula and the second on artificial neural networks (convolutional and fully connected). The Bayesian classifier has been found to show a lower percentage of identification errors with an equal error rate (EER) = 0.0053. The best result for neural networks was EER = 0.0266. An experiment the authors repeated with the same subjects six months after the initial data collection showed insignificant deviation in the number of wrong decisions (EER = 0.008).
| ACOUSTIC PROPERTIES AND STRUCTURE OF OUTER EARThe outer ear consists of the auricle and external auditory meatus, also called the auditory (ear) canal. This part of the ear is separated from the middle ear by the eardrum. The structure of the human ear is developed during childhood (up to 8 years); in adulthood, significant changes in the proportions of the ears and the channel do not occur [1]. The length, thickness, and, shape of the ear canal vary from person to person.The auricle and auditory canal are resonance systems. To obtain information about the internal structure of the This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.