Publicado en Fuzzy Sets and Systems This paper introduces an adapted fuzzy snake approach for efficiently solving some of the practical constraints in the off-line signature verification problem. Our method is called fuzzy shape-memory snakes due to its resemblance to shape-memory alloys, which are metals that in high-temperature conditions can remember their original shape. In our approach, the snake also “remembers” its geometry during its iterative adjustment to a test signature. Off-line signature verification aims to establish the degree of genuineness of a given test signature when compared to a reference signature. Due to the shape and size variability in signatures of the same subject, a system with tolerance to imprecision and also with some “memory” of its initial configured shape, would be very useful for this complex verification problem. To our knowledge, snakes and other active contour models have not been previosly applied to the offline signature verifica