You Say Redundant, I Say Multimodal

One man's redundancy is another man's multimodal, or so I've come to learn. What brought this to mind is the National Institute of Standards and Technology's release of its Multimodal Biometric Application Resource Kit.

According to NIST, most biometric security systems are "unimodal" in that they rely on a single distinguishing physical characteristic--a fingerprint, for instance--for authenticating identity. But relying on a single biometric feature can lead to problems--poor illumination can make a face image unrecognizable, dirty or damaged sensor plates can affect fingerprint equipment. Luckily redundancy can be built into systems to check multiple sources of information. Such redundant systems are referred to as "multimodal" because they examine fingerprint, face, and iris data. But most biometric equipment, including the sensors that capture data and the database that stores the information, are not interoperable. Organizations must either purchase a complete system or develop middleware--custom integration software--to link together applications.

Enter MBARK, an open source Multimodal Biometric Application Resource Kit. Originally developed as a tool to build a large database of face, fingerprint, and iris images for performance testing of biometric systems, MBARK has evolved into a standardized, flexible middleware package that lets you plug in sensors from different manufacturers. The package, which includes example applications and public-domain source code, can help reduce the complexity of building multimodal biometric applications. MBARK also can used to develop standards and tests for biometric system interoperability and usability.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:35 AM  Permalink