Handwritten signature is widely accepted and collectable biometric characteristic. Great entropy makes this characteristic suitable for research and development of new methods for personal authentication and identification. While development of authentication methods based on this biometric characteristic is common thing in academic and research community, there are only few attempts of developing personal identification system based on handwritten signature.

This paper presents basic differences between authentication and identification methods, followed by previous work in the field of handwritten signature identification and main directions in developing an on-line personal identification system based on handwritten signature. This work can be considered as the theoretic base for the further development of an on-line handwritten signature identification system.