1 - A method of identifying a person, comprising: (a) imaging creases in the skin of a person to be identified with an imaging device; (b) processing images from said imaging device to extract contextual information and biometric characteristics from said images; (c) comparing said extracted contextual information with reference contextual information contained in a reference database; and (d) matching said extracted biometric characteristics with reference biometric characteristics contained in said reference database; wherein said compared information is used for a filter to constrain which of said reference biometric characteristics are used to match said extracted biometric characteristics.