A hand holdable, portable apparatus for imaging a portion of an anatomy of a person, without physical contact with the anatomy. The apparatus has a housing, a touchscreen display mounted in the housing, and a plurality of illumination modules disposed on the housing and configured to provide illumination beams at different wavelengths and having different polarizations. A camera is supported on the housing and forms an imaging subsystem for capturing a plurality of acquired images produced by illumination from the illumination modules. A processing subsystem analyzes the acquired images and generates a new image which has enhanced contrast of features associated with at least one of a surface biometric trait of the portion of the anatomy, and/or a subsurface biometric trait of the portion of the anatomy. This image(s) can be used for verification of the person's identity by software incorporated in the portable apparatus or by transmitting information generated by the images to a remote data base.