An individual first rests his wrist, and on some devices, the middle of his fingers, on the sensor's supports such that the palm is held centimeters above the device's scanner, which flashes a near-infrared ray on the palm. Unlike the skin, through which near-infrared light passes, deoxygenated hemoglobin in the blood flowing through the veins absorbs near-infrared rays, illuminating the hemoglobin, causing it to be visible to the scanner. Arteries and capillaries, whose blood contains oxygenated hemoglobin, which does not absorb near-infrared light, are invisible to the sensor. The still image captured by the camera, which photographs in the near-infrared range, appears as a black network, reflecting the palm's vein pattern against the lighter background of the palm. An individual's palm vein image is converted by algorithms into data points, which is then compressed, encrypted, and stored by the software and registered along with the other details in his profile as a reference for future comparison. Then, each time a person logs in attempting to gain access by a palm scan to a particular bank account or secured entryway, etc., the newly captured image is likewise processed and compared to the registered one or to the bank of stored files for verification, all in a period of seconds. Numbers and positions of veins and their crossing points are all compared and, depending on verification, the person is either granted or denied access.