Guide to Biometric Reference Systems and Performance Evaluation

Our daily interactions are based on recognizing people. As information technology advances, our interactions will be accomplished through newly designed interfaces, with a vital element being the automated process of recognition of a person's real identity: Biometrics. In recent years, biometrics has moved from using fingerprints, to many different methods of assessing human physical and behavioural traits.

This useful guide introduces a new performance evaluation framework designed to provide complete coverage of performance evaluation of major biometric systems. Two key areas are presented: The first gives a unique snapshot of the performance evaluation of various biometrics within a common evaluation framework (databases and protocols). The second presents a state-of-the-art benchmarking evaluation framework for use in future performance evaluations - comprised of open-source reference systems.

Features and benefits:

- Includes a Foreword by renowned biometric expert Prof. Anil K. Jain, Michigan State University, USA

- Introduces the concept of reproducible results and comparative evaluations

- Presents an extensive benchmarking methodology

- Describes reference algorithms in detail, with a link to source code

- Biometrics Reference and Evaluation Toolkit provided via http://share.int-evry.fr/svnview-eph/

- Implements this methodology throughout all chapters

- Offers readers a tool for a better evaluation of their algorithms by giving them the instruments to fully reproduce the benchmarking (reference) experiments (software, database, experimental protocols)

- Provides a global perspective with a common evaluation scheme and methodology

- Examines current research results with this framework

- Consolidates results from publicly available databases, using well defined protocols