A review of biometric technology along with trends and prospects

•We discussed different biometric modalities with their advantages and challenges.•The article provides information regarding feature sets and recognition techniques.•We provided information regarding public data sources available for researchers.•The article contains thorough discussion on multi-modal biometric systems.•We provided biometric market share and prospects with exemplary evidences.

Identity management through biometrics offer potential advantages over knowledge and possession based methods. A wide variety of biometric modalities have been tested so far but several factors paralyze the accuracy of mono-modal biometric systems. Usually, the analysis of multiple modalities offers better accuracy. An extensive review of biometric technology is presented here. Besides the mono-modal systems, the article also discusses multi-modal biometric systems along with their architecture and information fusion levels. The paper along with the exemplary evidences highlights the potential for biometric technology, market value and prospects.