Offline signature verification using high pressure regions

A system for authenticating an image of an offline signature by analyzing high pressure regions, comprising:

• a pre-processing module resident on a computer and operable to process the image to determine the high pressure regions of the image;
• a feature extraction module resident on the computer and operable to:
• (1) extract global features from the high pressure regions of the image,
• (2) apply pattern recognition techniques to the global features to obtain a global static verification of the authenticity of the signature and a global subjective verification of the authenticity of the signature,
• (3) partition the image into equal vertical partitions and separately partition the image into equal horizontal partitions,
• (4) extract local features from the high pressure regions of each vertical partition and apply pattern recognition techniques to the local features of each vertical partition to obtain a local static vertical verification of the authenticity of the signature and a local subjective vertical verification of the authenticity of the signature, and
• (5) extract local features from the high pressure regions of each horizontal partition and apply pattern recognition techniques to the local features of each horizontal partition to obtain a local static horizontal verification of the authenticity of the signature and a local subjective horizontal verification of the authenticity of the signature;
• and
• a verification module resident on the computer and operable to verify the signature as genuine if the global static verification, global subjective verification, local static vertical verification, local subjective vertical verification, local static horizontal verification and local subjective horizontal verification all determined that the signature is authentic.