Protocol - Compulsory Executables

Each participant is required to submit, for each algorithm, two executables in the form of Win32 console applications.

• Both executables will take the input from command-line arguments and will append the output to a text file.
• One of the inputs is a database-specific configuration file. Participants are allowed to submit four 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 file; the command-line syntax is:
     ENROLL_XXXX imagefile templatefile configfile outputfile
     where:
     

     XXXX	is the participant ID assigned by the organizers
     imagefile	is the input image pathname
     templatefile	is the output template pathname
     configfile	is the configuration file pathname
     outputfile	is the 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	is the participant ID assigned by the organizers
     imagefile	is the input image pathname
     templatefile	is the input template pathname
     configfile	is the configuration file pathname
     outputfile	is the 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 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 image loading).
• The executables submitted by participants will be kept strictly confidential and will not be used outside the aim of FVC2006, except as indicated in the next section "Additional Executables". Furthermore, participants are allowed to protect their executables by using: expiration-date mechanisms, dongles, hardware dependent mechanisms, etc.

Protocol - Additional Executables

Providing the two additional executables described below is not compulsory for participating in FVC2006, but we strongly encourage the participants to submit them in order to allow some important experiments to be performed with great benefit to the fingerprint recognition community. In particular, FVC organizers plan to study:

• accuracy of algorithms in extracting minutiae features for creating interoperable ISO 19794-2 templates;
• feasibility of renewing fingerprint databases to avoid parameter overfitting: the same algorithms will be tested on renewed versions (i.e. with slightly perturbed images) of an initial database to measure the stability of the results;
• the relationship between accuracy and quality indicators: the same algorithms will be tested on degraded versions of an initial database to measure the performance drop.

  For this purpose, the following two executables should be submitted:

  1. ISOENROLL_XXXX enrolls a fingerprint image and produces an ISO 19794-2 compliant template file; the command-line syntax is:
     ISOENROLL_XXXX imagefile templatefile configfile outputfile
     where:
     

     XXXX	is the participant ID assigned by the organizers
     imagefile	is the input image pathname
     templatefile	is the output template pathname
     configfile	is the configuration file pathname
     outputfile	is the 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 (MATCHT_XXXX) matches a template (in the participant proprietary format, not in the ISO format) against another fingerprint template (in the proprietary format as well) and produces a similarity score. The aim of this executable is to speed up the evaluation when a huge number of tests has to be carried out. The command-line syntax is:
     MATCHT_XXXX templatefile1 templatefile2 configfile outputfile
     where:
     

     XXXX	is the participant ID assigned by the organizers
     templatefile1	is the first input template pathname
     templatefile2	is the second input template pathname
     configfile	is the configuration file pathname
     outputfile	is the 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 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 ISOENROLL_XXXX and MATCHT_XXXX are available in the download page to reduce the participants implementation efforts. These source files perform all the necessary I/O (including image loading).
• The executables submitted by participants will be kept strictly confidential and will only be used to perform additional experiments on the FVC2006 datasets, whose results will be published in a strictly anonymous form (that is, the names of the participants who provided the additional executables will not be disclosed and no participant name or ID will be associated with these results, even if the participant asked to disclose its name in the final FVC2006 results).
• For the benefit of those participants submitting one or both of the ISOENROLL and MATCHT executable files, selected key results obtained in the aforementioned planned studies will be given in confidential technical reports well in advance of the official publications.