Abstract: Biometrics not only authenticates an individual’s identity but is also a process that applies security measures to various systems such as bank check verification, authentication of legal documents etc. Handwriting is one of the unique and widely acceptable modes of authorizing an individual. This paper discusses all the steps to be carried out in achieving the desired objective i.e to determine whether the signature is original or forged. This paper also explains the procedure required for alignment and binarization of signatures. The entire process is covered in four stages: Image acquisition, Pre-processing, Feature extraction and Verification. Out of the four, this paper lays stress on first two stages. The work has been tagged appropriate after undergoing various stages of testing.

Keywords: Average error rate (AER), Feature Extraction, Image acquisition, Off-line signature verification, Support vector machine (SVMs)