Advancing Brainwave-Based Biometrics: A Large-Scale, Multi-Session Evaluation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Fallahi, Matin, Arias-Cabarcos, Patricia, Strufe, Thorsten
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Fallahi, Matin
Arias-Cabarcos, Patricia
Strufe, Thorsten
author_facet Fallahi, Matin
Arias-Cabarcos, Patricia
Strufe, Thorsten
contents The field of brainwave-based biometrics has gained attention for its potential to revolutionize user authentication through hands-free interaction, resistance to shoulder surfing, continuous authentication, and revocability. However, current research often relies on single-session or limited-session datasets with fewer than 55 subjects, raising concerns about the generalizability of the findings. To address this gap, we conducted a large-scale study using a public brainwave dataset comprising 345 subjects and over 6,007 sessions (an average of 17 per subject) recorded over five years using three headsets. Our results reveal that deep learning approaches significantly outperform hand-crafted feature extraction methods. We also observe Equal Error Rates (EER) increases over time (e.g., from 6.7% after 1 day to 14.3% after a year). Therefore, it is necessary to reinforce the enrollment set after successful login attempts. Moreover, we demonstrate that fewer brainwave measurement sensors can be used, with an acceptable increase in EER, which is necessary for transitioning from medical-grade to affordable consumer-grade devices. Finally, we compared our results to prior work and existing biometric standards. While our performance is on par with or exceeds previous approaches, it still falls short of industrial benchmarks. Based on the results, we hypothesize that further improvements are possible with larger training sets. To support future research, we have open-sourced our analysis code.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_17866
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Advancing Brainwave-Based Biometrics: A Large-Scale, Multi-Session Evaluation
Fallahi, Matin
Arias-Cabarcos, Patricia
Strufe, Thorsten
Signal Processing
Cryptography and Security
The field of brainwave-based biometrics has gained attention for its potential to revolutionize user authentication through hands-free interaction, resistance to shoulder surfing, continuous authentication, and revocability. However, current research often relies on single-session or limited-session datasets with fewer than 55 subjects, raising concerns about the generalizability of the findings. To address this gap, we conducted a large-scale study using a public brainwave dataset comprising 345 subjects and over 6,007 sessions (an average of 17 per subject) recorded over five years using three headsets. Our results reveal that deep learning approaches significantly outperform hand-crafted feature extraction methods. We also observe Equal Error Rates (EER) increases over time (e.g., from 6.7% after 1 day to 14.3% after a year). Therefore, it is necessary to reinforce the enrollment set after successful login attempts. Moreover, we demonstrate that fewer brainwave measurement sensors can be used, with an acceptable increase in EER, which is necessary for transitioning from medical-grade to affordable consumer-grade devices. Finally, we compared our results to prior work and existing biometric standards. While our performance is on par with or exceeds previous approaches, it still falls short of industrial benchmarks. Based on the results, we hypothesize that further improvements are possible with larger training sets. To support future research, we have open-sourced our analysis code.
title Advancing Brainwave-Based Biometrics: A Large-Scale, Multi-Session Evaluation
topic Signal Processing
Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.17866