Credit: N. Hanacek/NIST
Fingerprint images are among the information included in the three new biometrics datasets NIST has made available for research.
New biometric research data — ranging from fingerprints to facial photographs and iris scans — is now available from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Stripped of identifying information and created expressly for research purposes, the data is designed primarily for testing systems that verify a person’s identity before granting access — be it to another room or another country. Few available resources exist to help developers evaluate the performance of the software algorithms that form the heart of these systems, and the NIST data will help fill that gap.
“This all gets back to reproducible research,” said NIST computer scientist Greg Fiumara. “The data will help anyone who is interested in testing the error rates of biometric identification systems.”
The files, which are available on the NIST website, are organized into three Special Databases (SDs). Numbered SD 300, SD 301 and SD 302, they represent the first in what is intended to be an expanding collection of biometric resources.
While the three databases contain varied types of data collected at different times, two of them contain information gathered during the Nail to Nail Fingerprint Challenge, an IARPA-funded competition that NIST helped to design and carry out.
One of the new resources, SD 301, is significant for being the first “multimodal” dataset NIST has ever released. Multimodal means that an individual’s different ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
