The multimodal biometric watermarking system using multiple sources of information has been widely recognized. In this paper, multimodal biometric system is obtained by fusion of biometric features. The biometric features fingerprint and palmprint images are subjected to modality extraction. Different fusion methods like average fusion, minimum fusion, maximum fusion, discrete wavelet transform and stationary wavelet transform are implemented for the fusion of extracting modalities. The best fused image is analyzed by applying various fusion metrics. Generally, optimization watermarking systems provide better results than the other watermarking systems. In this paper, a hybrid of Genetic Algorithm and Bacterial Foraging Optimization Algorithm (GA-Based BFOA) is proposed for watermarking of images. The best fused image along with the cover image is fed as input to the watermarking algorithm. Various metrics such as Peak Signal Noise Ratio (PSNR), Normalized Absolute Error (NAE) and Normalized Cross Correlation (NCC) are used for analyzing the robustness of the algorithm with various cover images.

Biometrics acts as a source for identifying a human being. This is used for authentication and identification purposes. In order to overcome the limitations of unimodal biometric system multimodal biometrics came into existence. Digital watermarking is the technology of embedding information (i.e., watermark or host image) into the multimedia data (such as image, audio, video and text), called cover image. It is realized by embedding data that is invisible to the human visual system into a host image. Hence, the term digital image watermarking is a procedure by which watermark data is covered inside a host image which imposes imperceptible changes to the picture.

Watermarking techniques were practiced in multimodal biometric systems for the purpose of protecting and authenticating biometric data and enhancing accuracy of recognition. A multimodal biometric system combines two or more biometric data recognition results such as a combination of a subject’s fingerprint, face, iris and voice. This helps to increase the reliability of personal identification system that discriminates between an authorized person and a fraudulent person.

Information Technology Journal, Multimodal, Biometric, Fusion, Genetic Algorithm-Based Bacterial Foraging Optimization Algorithm (GA-Based BFOA), Optimization, Metrics, Modality.