Signature Verification through MATLAB Using

Image Processing
Kritika Raghuwanshi

Niketa Dubey,

Riju Nema

Rishabh Sharma

kritikaraghuwanshi.17@gmail.com nikita112dubey@gmail.com
riju.nema27@gmail.com
rish1990786@gmail.com
(B.E), EC Deptt. Jai Narain College Of Technology & Science, Bhopal(India)

Abstract: The signature is a particular pattern

used by human beings for their personal
identification. To prevent the forgery many
software are used now a days. Signature
verification system can be of two types, either
offline or online signature verification system. In
this paper we verify the offline signature, which is
acquired through a camera. This signature
verification system is designed using MATLAB.

II. Literature Survey

Signature Data Base For training and testing of the
signature recognition and verification system 10
signatures are used. The templates of the signature as
shown in figure 1. The input signature is captured
from the digital high pixel camera. The next stage
was the preprocessing of these signatures collected.

Keywords: Data Acquisition, Image acquisition,

Image Processing, Off-line signature, Gray-scale.
I. Introduction
Biometric methods are nowadays being increasingly
used to for identification purposes both due to its
accuracy and convenience at the user/consumer end.
There exist a number of biometrics methods today
e.g. Signatures, Fingerprints, Iris etc. There is
considerable interest in authentication based on
handwritten signature verification system as it is the
cheapest way to authenticate the person. a signature
is treated as an image carrying a certain pattern of
pixels that pertains to a specific individual. Signature
Verification Problem therefore is concerned with
determining whether a particular signature truly
belongs to a person or not. There are two approaches
to signature verification, online and offline
differentiated by the way data is acquired. In offline
case signature is obtained on a piece of paper and
later scanned. We are recognizing and verifying the
signatures through digital image processing using
MATLAB software so that we get the exact results
with high precision and much feasible for diverse
applications. We approach the problem in two steps.
Initially the scanned signature image is preprocessed
to be suitable for extracting features. Then the
preprocessed image is used to extract relevant
geometric parameters that can distinguish signatures
of different persons. The net step involves the use of
these extracted features to verify a given images.

Figure.1 Signature Templates

The following were the processes that were carried
out on the signatures.
Conversion from RGB image to a black and white
(logical) image- For signature verification, the
color of ink has no significance at all. Instead the
form of two signatures must be compared. Hence
all scanned images were converted to black and
white images where white is represented by 1 and
black by 0. Hence the signature part of the image
was represented by 0 and blank part of the image
(without any signature) by 1. This conversion also
makes future coding easier.

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Using region props to filter out those regions

having area less than 45 pixels- The region props
function of MATLAB was used to remove all
stray dots arising in the image due to improper
scanning (noise). By setting the threshold for area
at 45 pixels, all arbitrary dots get removed, but it
is ensured that the actual signature is not affected
as its area is usually in the order of 1000s of
pixels.
Finding the bounding box of the image and
cropping unnecessary parts (edges) of the imageThe bounding box of the image was found and the
image was cropped out, thereby eliminating blank
area from the sides of the image. Thus now each
image consists only of the signature part. We
have avoided resizing the images to the same
width or height as it distorts the image to a large
extent.
The above steps have been graphically shown on
figure 2.

are summed up, it gives an estimate of the intensity

of the signature at that x coordinate .Thus, by similar
reasoning, we can conclude that the VPP and HPP
profiles qualitatively describe the distribution of the
signature along the horizontal (x) and vertical (y) axis
respectively.
Now we elaborate on how the feature vector
for VPP (and HPP) is found. First, a signature, say
s1, is taken and its VPP (or HPP) vector found. Then
it is compared against the VPP (or HPP) vectors of
all other specimen signatures (s2 through s10).For
each comparison (e.g. between s1 and s2), Firstly the
two VPP (or HPP) profiles are resized using the
imresize function of MATLAB so that both profiles
are of the same length. The intensity values of s1 and
s2 are subtracted, and the absolute value of the
difference is stored in another vector called holder.
An example of a signature along with its VPP and
HPP plots is shown as.

The VPP profile of the above signature is shown

below. It can be observed that the VPP profile takes
the maximum value at around x=130, where the letter
p occurs in the actual signature.
Figure.2 Conversion from RGB to Gray scale.
III. Feature Extraction
For building of signature verification system, we
have used VPP and HPP information VPP (vertical
projection profile)is nothing but the sum of all pixels
at each x coordinate, plotted versus x. On the other
hand HPP (horizontal projection profile) is the sum
of all pixels at each y coordinate, plotted versus y.
It must be kept in mind that after the pre-processing
described before, each pixel containing a signature
has the logical value of 1.Thus, for a particular x
coordinate, whenever the values of all pixels along y

The HPP profile of the same signature is shown

below.

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204

Noise Ratio (SNR). These can be calculated

mathematically from equation 4 and 5.
MeanErr
=
MeanErr
sum(sum(SqrErr(:,:,i)))/(row*col);
(4)

PSNR= 10*log10(c*255^2/MeanErr); (5)

IV. MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS

The camera gives a colored image at the MATLAB.
The colored image is of the RGB (Red, Green, Blue)
format. In other terms, the colored image consist of
coordinate axis and three color matrices i.e. Red,
Green and Blue color matrices. But the process which
we are carrying out in MATLAB is based on Gray
scale format. Therefore we convert our color image
into Gray scale through equation no. 1
Gray color = 0.299*Red +
0.114*Blue

0.5876*Green +
(1)

The VPP and HPP profiles qualitatively describe the

distribution of the signature along the horizontal (x)
and vertical (y) axis respectively.
And they can mathematically be derived from
equation no. 2 and 3
VPP (x) =

(2)

HPP (y) =

(3)

Where A (x,y) represents the logical value (either 0

or 1) at the pixel with coordinate
(x,y), and xmax is the maximum x coordinate of the
signature and ymax is maximum y coordinate of the
signature.
After the images have been matched in the MATLAB
the present error is given in terms of two parameters
i.e. Root Mean Square (RMS) error and Signal to

V. CONCLUSION
In this study, we presented Off-Line Signature
Recognition and Verification System through
MATLAB using image processing. While evaluating
the signature verification system we evaluated two
parameters as detailed before VPP (Vertical
Projection Profile) and HPP (Horizontal Projection
Profile). From testing performed we noticed that the
testing done on the basis of VPP is more reliable than
testing done on the basis of HPP. VPP provides a
more reliable result on tests like false acceptance,
false rejection and failure result rather than HPP.
Generally, the threshold is set to obtain the best
possible overall result, taking into account all the
tests, as tweaking the threshold is invariably a trade
off between the accuracy for various tests (viz false
acceptance, false rejection, and forgeries). However,
the success rate for detection of forgeries is quite
low. This is because while signing a forgery, the
person makes a conscious attempt to make the forged
signature as similar to the original signature as
possible. In general, for all the three grounds of
evaluation, the performance improves if the size of
the database, i.e. the number of comparisons is
increased. This study aims to reduce to a minimum
the cases of forgery in business transactions.
REFERENCES
[1] Anu Rathi, Divya Rathi, Parmanand Astya
Offline handwritten Signature Verification by using
Pixel based Method International Journal of
Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181 Vol. 1 Issue 7, September-2012.
[2] Nilesh Y. Choudhary, Mrs. Rupal Patil, Dr.
Umesh. Bhadade and Prof. Bhupendra M
Chaudhari Signature Recognition & Verification
System Using Back Propagation Neural Network
International Journal of IT, Engineering and
Applied Sciences Research (IJIEASR) ISSN:
2319-4413 Volume 2, January 2013.

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205

[3] Prashanth C. R. and K. B. Raja Off-line

Signature Verification Based on Angular Features
International
Journal
of
Modeling
and
Optimization, Vol. 2, No. 4, August 2012.
[4] Aniketh Talwai, B.S. Sasikanth and Debabrata
Sengupta Offline Signature Verification Project
Work Report, IIT Guwahati, April 2009.

4. RISHABH SHARMA
Is Under Graduate in
Electronics
and
Communications
Engineering from the
Rajiv Gandhi Technical
University,
from
Jai
Narain
College
of
Technology and Science,
Bhopal, M.P., India. 2013.

Authors Profile:
1.

KRITIKA
RAGHUWANSHI
Is Under Graduate in
Electronics
and
Communications
Engineering from the
Rajiv Gandhi Technical
University,
from
Jai
Narain
College
of
Technology and Science,
Bhopal, M.P., India. 2013.
2.

NIKETA DUBEY Is
Under
Graduate
in
Electronics
and
Communications
Engineering from the
Rajiv Gandhi Technical
University,
from
Jai
Narain
College
of
Technology and Science,
Bhopal, M.P., India. 2013.

3.

RIJU NEMA Is Under

Graduate in Electronics
and
Communications
Engineering from the
Rajiv Gandhi Technical
University,.
from Jai
Narain
College
of
Technology and Science,
Bhopal, M.P., India. 2013

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