Off-line signature verification systems

Signatures are extensively used as a means of personal verification. Manual signature-based authentication of a large number of documents is a very difficult and time consuming task. Consequently for many years, in the field of protected communication and financial applications, we have observed an explosive growth in biometric personal authentication systems that are closely connected with measurable physical unique characteristics (hand geometry, iris scan, finger prints or DNA) or behavioural features. Human signatures provide secure means for confirmation and authorization in legal documents. So nowadays, automatic signature verification becomes an essential component. In order to convey the state-of-the-art in the field to researchers, in this paper we present a survey of off-line signature verification systems.