Science & Justice
Volume 48, Issue 4 , Pages 182-186, December 2008

A test of the effectiveness of speaker verification for differentiating between identical twins

  • Aladdin Ariyaeeinia

      Affiliations

    • Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, AL10 9AB, UK
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorresponding author. Tel.: +44 1707 284348; fax: +44 1707 284199.
    • ,
  • Christopher Morrison

      Affiliations

    • Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification, University of Dundee, Dundee, DD1 4EH, UK
    • Now at MedImmune UK Ltd, Liverpool, UK.
    • ,
  • Amit Malegaonkar

      Affiliations

    • Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, AL10 9AB, UK
    • Now at Trinity Convergence India Pvt., Ltd., Pune, India.
    • ,
  • Sue Black

      Affiliations

    • Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification, University of Dundee, Dundee, DD1 4EH, UK

Received 23 November 2007; received in revised form 5 February 2008; accepted 14 February 2008. published online 27 May 2008.

Abstract 

This paper presents investigations into the ability of speaker verification technology to discriminate between identical twins. It is shown that whilst, in general, the genetic and non-genetic characteristics of voice are both of value to speaker verification capabilities, it is the latter which is highly beneficial in the separation of the speech of identical twins. It is further demonstrated that through the use of unconstrained cohort normalisation as a complementary means for the exploitation of such voice characteristics, the verification reliability can be considerably enhanced for both identical twins and unrelated speakers. Experiments were conducted using a bespoke clean-speech database consisting of utterances from 49 identical twin pairs. The paper details the problem in speaker verification posed by identical twins, discusses the experimental investigations and provides an analysis of the results.

Keywords: Speaker verification, Identical twins, Score normalisation, Biometrics

To access this article, please choose from the options below

Login to an existing account or Register a new account.

  • Purchase this article for 31.50 USD (You must login/register to purchase this article)

    Online access for 24 hours. The PDF version can be downloaded as your permanent record.

  • Subscribe to this title

    Get unlimited online access to this article and all other articles in this title 24/7 for one year.

  • Claim access now

    For current subscribers with Society Membership or Account Number.

  • Visit SciVerse ScienceDirect to see if you have access via your institution.
 

PII: S1355-0306(08)00031-2

doi:10.1016/j.scijus.2008.02.002

Science & Justice
Volume 48, Issue 4 , Pages 182-186, December 2008

Article Tools

* Image Usage & Resolution