Graphical Computing Problem: Signature Comparisons

Question

As part of a college project, I'd like to deploy a system that compares signatures to check their similarities/validity.

Questions:

a)What algorithms are used on this branch of graphical computing (image comparison)?

b)Are there any open-source projects from which I could learn/participate?

c)Is there any commercial software available for signature comparisons?

Answer 1

a) There are many ways to go about signature comparison, including functional comparisons (mathematically defining signature curves and comparing them), compression (how close or spread out letters are), character-level (building a glyph by glyph database for a person and comparing), image-direct (literally direct image-to-reference comparison), and others. In addition, many systems integrate with signing pads to evaluate pressure at different points along the signature.

b) I haven't done the research.

c) I've used quite a few different ones, one prominent vendor is Topaz Systems.