Sony Mofiria: Taking your identity in vein

Sony is taking biometrics from the surface of the finger to the inside with a new vein-authentication technology that could show up on mobile devices within the year.

The compact, camera-based system -- called 'Mofiria', though we have no idea why -- uses a CMOS sensor to diagonally capture scattered light inside the finger veins. Data from the pattern is compressed, making it possible for the information to be stored on gadgets such as laptops or mobile phones.

Sony says vein-authentication technology achieves higher accuracy and produces faster reads than other biometric authentication techniques, such as fingerprint or retinal scans. Finger-vein patterns differ from person to person and finger to finger, Sony noted, and do not change over the years. They're also much easier to remember than passwords.

Sony claims the false-rejection rate for the system is less than 0.1 per cent and processing time for identification takes only about 0.015 seconds using a personal computer CPU, and about 0.25 seconds using a mobile-phone CPU.

Last year, in a similar vein (sorry), Fujitsu introduced a palm-reading mouse that scans veins rather than fingertips -- a method the company also claims is faster and more effective.

Hitachi has been working on bringing its vein-authentication technology to steering wheels, fitting them with a biometric reader that only starts the engine for drivers with recognisable vein patterns. The system is already used in ATMs, computers and cardless payment systems.