Now, ears too can be used for airport security ID checks

LONDON - A study has found that just like finger printing, passport photos and eye recognition, our ears too can be scanned at airports to prove our identity.

Researchers have discovered that every person has uniquely-shaped ears and have formulated a way to scan them to compare them with images already compiled in a database.

This latest idea in biometrics could supplement other security techniques like iris scanning already being employed to combat the threat of terrorism and illegal immigration.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, Prof Mark Nixon lead the team who devised the system at the University of Southampton’s school of electronics and computer science.

“There are a whole load of structures in the ear that you can use to get a set of measurements that are unique to an individual,” the Daily Mail quoted him as saying.

“With biometrics, a lot of the problem is what happens when people get old. With facial recognition, the systems are often confused by crows’ feet and other signs of ageing.

“Your ears, however, age very gracefully,” he explained.

The UK Passport Service has been using a facial recognition technology at London Stansted Airport for the past two years along with retina scanning, but the software can only cope with an unchanged neutral facial expression.

But the ear scan system is said to be 99.6 percent accurate. It maps the curves and wrinkles of the skin, cartilage and lobes using a system called “image ray transform”. (ANI)