-In this paper we developed and manufactured a low-cost pc-based hand geometry verification system that can be used in various access control applications. The s/w and h/w were optimized for the code, speed, performance, and for cost. A new algorithm for the extraction of the hand geometry characteristic features based on anatomical landmarks (fingertips and bottom of valleys between fingers) were used in this system. These features are extracted from the plan of the 2D_hand image captured by a digital CCD camera and Infra Red Camera. These features were used for the verification process. LCD, Keypad, and control circuitry for Digital or IR camera were designed and integrated within a PIII 550 system. Image processing operations such as optimal thresholding, boundary extraction, thinning, and tracing were used to get the anatomical landmarks (which are 45 points) from the acquired grayscale images. Twenty-five distance and area measures are extracted automatically based on the 45 points. The features (Distances and areas) are the finger lengths, finger areas, finger widths at different heights of the different fingers of the right hand as well as the radius of the hand center. The algorithm has been tested on 500 images successfully. Sensitivity, specificity, and efficiency were calculated for the overall system based on a digital or IR CCD cameras. The results were found to be more than 99.7 % for the 500 images captured