# Explainable offline automatic signature verifier to support forensic handwriting examiners

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.12695 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12695/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 14 of its 82 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 May 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [Identity Mappings in Deep Residual Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.05027/) (2016)
- [Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): Concepts, Taxonomies, Opportunities and Challenges toward Responsible AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10045/) (2019)
- [Explanation in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Social Sciences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.07269/) (2017)
- [The Mythos of Model Interpretability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.03490/) (2016)
- [Biometrics: Trust, but Verify](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.06625/) (2021)
- [Explainable Face Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.00916/) (2020)
- [SigNet: Convolutional Siamese Network for Writer Independent Offline Signature Verification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.02131/) (2017)
- [Learning Features for Offline Handwritten Signature Verification using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.05787/) (2017)
- [Visual Psychophysics for Making Face Recognition Algorithms More Explainable](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.07140/) (2018)
- [Handwriting Biometrics: Applications and Future Trends in e-Security and e-Health](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.12760/) (2022)
- [ICDAR 2021 Competition on On-Line Signature Verification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.00739/) (2021)
- [Meta-learning for fast classifier adaptation to new users of Signature Verification systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.08060/) (2019)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Signature verification is a critical task in many applications, including forensic science, legal judgments, and financial markets. However, current signature verification systems are often difficult to explain, which can limit their acceptance in these applications. In this paper, we propose a novel explainable offline automatic signature verifier (ASV) to support forensic handwriting examiners. Our ASV is based on a universal background model (UBM) constructed from offline signature images. It allows us to assign a questioned signature to the UBM and to a reference set of known signatures using simple distance measures. This makes it possible to explain the verifier's decision in a way that is understandable to non experts. We evaluated our ASV on publicly available databases and found that it achieves competitive performance with state of the art ASVs, even when challenging 1 versus 1 comparison are considered. Our results demonstrate that it is possible to develop an explainable ASV that is also competitive in terms of performance. We believe that our ASV has the potential to improve the acceptance of signature verification in critical applications such as forensic science and legal judgments.