The present teaching relates to detecting palm liveness. When an image is received with visual information claimed to represent a palm of a person, an initial region of interests (ROI) is identified from the image that corresponds to the palm and an initial dimension thereof is determined. When the initial dimension is smaller than a specified dimension, the initial ROI is extended in some respective directions to some expansion region with certain expansion dimension to generate an ROI using the visual information in the ROI from the image. A plurality of decisions are obtained with respect to the ROI, each of which is made individually on whether the ROI represents a specific type of fake palm. The decisions are then combined to derive a liveness detection decision on whether the palm captured in the image is live.