Karim Afdel

Abdelilah Ganmati, Karim Afdel, Lahcen Koutti

In the era of pervasive cyber threats and exponential growth in digital services, the inadequacy of single-factor authentication has become increasingly evident. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), which combines knowledge-based factors (passwords, PINs), possession-based factors (smart cards, tokens), and inherence-based factors (biometric traits), has emerged as a robust defense mechanism. Recent breakthroughs in deep learning have transformed the capabilities of biometric systems, enabling higher accuracy, resilience to spoofing, and seamless integration with hardware-based solutions. At the same time, smart card technologies have evolved to include on-chip biometric verification, cryptographic processing, and secure storage, thereby enabling compact and secure multi-factor devices. This survey presents a comprehensive synthesis of recent work (2019-2025) at the intersection of deep learning, biometrics, and smart card technologies for MFA. We analyze biometric modalities (face, fingerprint, iris, voice), review hardware-based approaches (smart cards, NFC, TPMs, secure enclaves), and highlight integration strategies for real-world applications such as digital banking, healthcare IoT, and critical infrastructure. Furthermore, we discuss the major challenges that remain open, including usability-security tradeoffs, adversarial attacks on deep learning models, privacy concerns surrounding biometric data, and the need for standardization in MFA deployment. By consolidating current advancements, limitations, and research opportunities, this survey provides a roadmap for designing secure, scalable, and user-friendly authentication frameworks.

Abdelilah Ganmati, Karim Afdel, Lahcen Koutti

We present a practical match-on-card design for face verification in which compact 64/128-bit templates are produced off-card by PCA-ITQ and compared on-card via constant-time Hamming distance. We specify ISO/IEC 7816-4 and 14443-4 command APDUs with fixed-length payloads and decision-only status words (no score leakage), together with a minimal per-identity EEPROM map. Using real binary codes from a CelebA working set (55 identities, 412 images), we (i) derive operating thresholds from ROC/DET, (ii) replay enroll->verify transactions at those thresholds, and (iii) bound end-to-end time by pure link latency plus a small constant on-card budget. Even at the slowest contact rate (9.6 kbps), total verification time is 43.9 ms (64 b) and 52.3 ms (128 b); at 38.4 kbps both are <14 ms. At FAR = 1%, both code lengths reach TPR = 0.836, while 128 b lowers EER relative to 64 b. An optional +6 B helper (targeted symbol-level parity over empirically unstable bits) is latency-negligible. Overall, short binary templates, fixed-payload decision-only APDUs, and constant-time matching satisfy ISO/IEC transport constraints with wide timing margin and align with ISO/IEC 24745 privacy goals. Limitations: single-dataset evaluation and design-level (pre-hardware) timing; we outline AgeDB/CFP-FP and on-card microbenchmarks as next steps.

Tarik Ayaou, Azeddine Beghdadi, Karim Afdel et al.

Road signs detection and recognition in natural scenes is one of the most important tasksin the design of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). However, illumination changes remain a major problem. In this paper, an efficient ap-proach of road signs segmentation based on photometric invariants is proposed. This method is based on color in-formation using a hybrid distance, by exploiting the chro-matic distance and the red and blue ratio, on l Theta Phi color space which is invariant to highlight, shading and shadow changes. A comparative study is performed to demonstrate the robustness of this approach over the most frequently used methods for road sign segmentation. The experimental results and the detailed analysis show the high performance of the algorithm described in this paper.

H. Ouahi, K. Afdel, M. Machkour

In the medical field, images are increasingly used to facilitate diagnosis of diseases. These images are stored in multimedia databases accompanied by doctor s prescriptions and other information related to patients.Search for medical images has become for clinical applications an essential tool to bring effective aid in diagnosis. Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) is one of the possible solutions to effectively manage these databases. Our contribution is to define a relevant descriptor to retrieve images based on multiresolution analysis of texture using Local Binary Pattern LBP. This descriptor once calculated and information s relating to the patient; will be placed in the image using the technique of reversible watermarking. Thereby, the image, descriptor of its contents, the BFILE locator and patientrelated information become a single entity, so even the administrator cannot have access to the patient private data.

H. Ouahi, M. El Hajji, K. Afdel

In the cancerology domain, we were brought to make periodic mammography images to monitor tumor patients. Oracle Database Management system (DBMS) is a solution to manage these images with patient's data recorder. Knowing the large size of medical images of mammograms, the Oracle DBMS saves these images outside the Oracle database using external LOBs. The link between these images and Oracle is done through the BFILE. At this level, two problems are raised: the first problem is that access to these images can become impossible because the link is likely to be broken. The second problem is security, the fact that the images are saved outside the Oracle database, they do not benefit from its powerful security. The protection of the integrity and confidentiality of data and patient images are a necessity defended by laws and they must be preserved against any unauthorized access, alteration or destruction. In this paper, we propose the method of reversible watermarking technique based on the difference expansion to resolve these two problems and explore its use in search and retrieval strategy of images.

Ali Aajli, Karim Afdel

In recent years, adaptive learning systems rely increasingly on learning hierarchy to customize the educational logic developed in their courses. Most approaches do not consider that the relationships of prerequisites between the skills are fuzzy relationships. In this article, we describe a new approach of a practical application of fuzzy logic techniques to the construction of learning hierarchies. For this, we use a learning hierarchy predefined by one or more experts of a specific field. However, the relationships of prerequisites between the skills in the learning hierarchy are not definitive and they are fuzzy relationships. Indeed, we measure relevance degree of all relationships existing in this learning hierarchy and we try to answer to the following question: Is the relationships of prerequisites predefined in initial learning hierarchy are correctly established or not?

Ali Aajli, Karim Afdel

The domain model is one of the important components used by adaptive learning systems to automatically generate customized courses for the learners. In this paper our contribution is to propose a new tool for implementation of a domain model based on fuzzy relationships among concepts. This tool allows the experts and teachers to find the best parameters in order to adapt the learners's differences.

Said Aminzou, Brahim Er-Raha, Youness Idrissi Khamlichi et al.

In this paper, we propose an efficient digital watermarking scheme to strengthen the security level already present in the database management system and to avoid illegal access to comprehensive content of database including patient's information. Doctors diagnose medical images by seeing Region of Interest (ROI). A ROI of a medical image is an area including important information and must be stored without any distortion. If a medical image is illegally obtained or if its content is changed, it may lead to wrong diagnosis. We substitute the part out of ROI of LSB bitplane of the image with the patient data and a binary feature map. This latter is obtained by extracting edges of the resized image to the quarter of its size using Laplacian operator. This image is directly integrated into the database. The edge map and invariant moments are used to check the integrity of the image.