Abstract:In this paper, we propose a novel approach for verification of on-line signatures based on user dependent feature selection and symbolic representation. Unlike other signature verification methods, which work with same features for all users, the proposed approach introduces the concept of user dependent features. It exploits the typicality of each and every user to select different features for different users. Initially all possible features are extracted for all users and a method of feature selection is employed for selecting user dependent features. The selected features are clustered using Fuzzy C means algorithm. In order to preserve the intra-class variation within each user, we recommend to represent each cluster in the form of an interval valued symbolic feature vector. A method of signature verification based on the proposed cluster based symbolic representation is also presented. Extensive experimentations are conducted on MCYT-100 User (DB1) and MCYT-330 User (DB2) online signature data sets to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed novel approach.