"An Algorithm Makes It Possible to Identify People by Their Heartbeat"

Biometrics help identify and authenticate a person by analyzing and measuring physical characteristics such as the face, voice, fingerprint, retina, and more. Biometric-based tools are increasingly supplementing or replacing password systems in the realm of security. A team of researchers from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and the Shahid Rajaee Teacher Training University (SRTTU) proposes an innovative identification method that is based on the exclusive characteristics of the heartbeat. Their technique involves using electrocardiograms (ECG) and analyzing five musical qualities, including dynamics, rhythm, timbre, pitch, and tonality, which are commonly used to characterize audio files. These qualities are applied to the sound of heartbeats, which are then used to obtain a combination of parameters unique for each person. According to the team, their approach has an accuracy rate of 96.6 percent. Although biometric identification based on cardiac recordings has already been proven effective through years of studies, this new work is different as the researchers look at the ECG recording as if it were a sound wave. They also analyze this sound wave using qualities commonly explored to characterize music. The universality of this method's identification is its main advantage since some people still cannot be recognized by certain types of biometrics due to injury, amputation, or disabling physical characteristics. The heartbeat is a bio-signal present in all humans, without exception. This article continues to discuss the proposal and continued development of the researchers' method for using the heartbeat as a biometric tool.

UC3M reports "An Algorithm Makes It Possible to Identify People by Their Heartbeat"