title: Performance of biometric quality measures.
abstract: We document methods for the quantitative evaluation of systems that produce a scalar summary of a biometric sample's quality. We are motivated by a need to test claims that quality measures are predictive of matching performance. We regard a quality measurement algorithm as a black box that converts an input sample to an output scalar. We evaluate it by quantifying the association between those values and observed matching results. We advance detection error trade-off and error versus reject characteristics as metrics for the comparative evaluation of sample quality measurement algorithms. We proceed this with a definition of sample quality, a description of the operational use of quality measures. We emphasize the performance goal by including a procedure for annotating the samples of a reference corpus with quality values derived from empirical recognition scores.
authors.affiliation: Information Technology Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA. pgrother@nist.gov
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Grother
authors.forename: Elham
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Tabassi
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D001699:Biometry / Q000379:methods*; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D006801:Humans; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D011786:Quality Control; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity