Detection of Forged Signatures Using Directional Gradient Spectrum of Image Outline and Weighted Fuzzy Classifier

In this paper, a method for detection of forged signatures based on spectral analysis of directional gradient density function and a weighted fuzzy classifier is proposed. The well defined outline of an incoming signature image is extracted in a preprocessing stage which includes noise reduction, automatic thresholding, image restoration and erosion process. The directional gradient density function derived from extracted signature outline is highly related to the overall shape of signature image, and thus its frequency spectrum is used as a feature set. With this spectral feature set, having a property to be invariant in size, shift, and rotation, a weighted fuzzy classifier is evaluated for the verification of freehand and random forgeries. Experiments show that less than 5% averaged error rate can be achieved on a database of 500 signature samples.