Protocol

Each participant is required to submit two executables in the form of Win32 console application.

• Both the executables will take the input from command-line arguments and will append the output to a text file.
• The inputs include a database-specific configuration file; in fact, participants are allowed to submit 4 distinct configuration files db1.cfg, db2.cfg, db3.cfg and db4.cfg (one for each database) in order to adjust the algorithm's internal parameters according to each specific database. Configuration files can be text files or binary files and their I/O is responsibility of the participant code. Configuration files can also contain pre-computed data to save time during enrollment and matching.
  1. The first executable (ENROLL_XXXX) enrolls a fingerprint image and produces a template; the command-line syntax is:
     ENROLL_XXXX imagefile templatefile configfile outputfile
     where:
     

     XXXX	participant ID assigned by organizers (different IDs will be assigned to the same participant in case of submission to both the categories)
     imagefile	input TIF image pathname
     templatefile	output template pathname
     configfile	configuration file pathname
     outputfile	output text-file where a log string (of the form imagefile templatefile result) must be appended; result is "OK" if the enrollment can be performed or "FAIL" if the input image cannot be processed by the algorithm

  2. The second executable (MATCH_XXXX) matches a fingerprint image against a fingerprint template and produces a similarity score; the command-line syntax is:
     MATCH_XXXX imagefile templatefile configfile outputfile
     where:
     

     XXXX	participant ID assigned by organizers (different IDs will be assigned to the same participant in case of submission to both the categories)
     imagefile	input TIF image pathname
     templatefile	input template pathname
     configfile	configuration file pathname
     outputfile	output text-file where a log string (of the form imagefile templatefile result similarity) must be appended; result is "OK" if the matching can be performed or "FAIL" if the matching cannot be executed by the algorithm; similarity is a floating point value ranging from 0 to 1 which indicates the similarity between the template and the fingerprint: 0 means no similarity, 1 maximum similarity.

• Both the executables have to operate only on the explicitly-given inputs, without exploiting any learning technique or template consolidation/update based on previous enrolls/matches.
• Two C-language skeletons for ENROLL_XXXX and MATCH_XXXX are available in the download page to reduce the participants implementation efforts. These source files perform all the necessary I/O (including TIF image loading).
• The executables submitted by participants will be kept strictly confidential and will not be used outside the aim of FVC2004. Furthermore, participants are allowed to protect their executables by using: expiration-date mechanisms, dongles, hardware dependent mechanisms, etc.