ISO/IEC 29159-1:2010

INTERNATIONAL ISO/IEC
STANDARD 29159-1
First edition
2010-09-01
Information technology — Biometric
calibration, augmentation and fusion
data —
Part 1:
Fusion information format
Technologies de l'information — Étalonnage biométrique, données
d'augmentation et de fusion —
Partie 1: Format d'information de fusion

Reference number
©
ISO/IEC 2010
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ii © ISO/IEC 2010 – All rights reserved

Contents Page
Foreword .v
Introduction.vi
1 Scope.1
2 Conformance .1
3 Normative references.1
4 Terms and definitions .1
5 Symbols and abbreviated terms .2
6 Fusion information format (FIF).3
6.1 Overview.3
6.2 Byte ordering .4
6.3 Numeric values .4
6.4 Fusion header block.4
7 Common elements .8
7.1 General .8
7.2 Parameter kind.8
7.3 Parameter origin .9
7.4 Distributions present .9
7.5 Number of comparisons .9
7.6 Pre-normalization flag.9
8 Type 1 record .10
8.1 Purpose .10
8.2 Format.10
8.3 Use case (Informative) .11
9 Type 2 record .12
9.1 Purpose .12
9.2 Format.12
9.3 Use case (Informative) .13
10 Type 3 record .13
10.1 Purpose .13
10.2 Format.14
Annex A (informative) Document Overview .16
Annex B (informative) Example Cumulative Distribution Functions.18
Annex C (informative) Use of pre-normalized data.20
Annex D (informative) Source for evaluation of spline .22
Bibliography.23

Figures
Figure 1 — Schematic representation of fusion information format usage.vii
Figure B.1 — Example CDFs and their spline representations .19
Figure C.1 — Example CDFs of internal comparison scores and pre-normalized scores .20
© ISO/IEC 2010 – All rights reserved iii

Tables
Table 1 — Fusion information format record structure.3
Table 2 — Fusion header block structure .3
Table 3 — Type 1 record structure.3
Table 4 — Type 2 record structure.4
Table 5 — Type 3 record structure.4
Table 6 — Textual representation of numerical value .4
Table 7 — The fusion header block .5
Table 8 — CBEFF Product Identifiers.6
Table 9 — Database identifiers.6
Table 10 — Database quality values.7
Table 11 — Score sense codes .8
Table 12 — Identifiers for statistical quantities .8
Table 13 — Origins of statistical data.9
Table 14 — Distribution information present.9
Table 15 — Pre-normalization codes.10
Table 16 — Subtype A format.10
Table 17 — Type 1 record format.10
Table 18 — Subtype B format.12
Table 19 — Type 2 record format.12
Table 20 — Subtype C format.14
Table 21 — Type 3 record format.14
Table A.1 — Fusion information format type taxonomy.16

iv © ISO/IEC 2010 – All rights reserved

Foreword
ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies
(ISO member bodies). The work of preparing International Standards is normally carried out through ISO
technical committees. Each member body interested in a subject for which a technical committee has been
established has the right to be represented on that committee. International organizations, governmental and
non-governmental, in liaison with ISO, also take part in the work. ISO collaborates closely with the
International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) on all matters of electrotechnical standardization.
International Standards are drafted in accordance with the rules given in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2.
The main task of technical committees is to prepare International Standards. Draft International Standards
adopted by the technical committees are circulated to the member bodies for voting. Publication as an
International Standard requires approval by at least 75 % of the member bodies casting a vote.
Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of patent
rights. ISO shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.
ISO/IEC 29159-1 was prepared by Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology,
Subcommittee SC 37, Biometrics.
ISO/IEC 29159 consists of the following parts, under the general title Information technology — Biometric
calibration, augmentation and fusion data:
⎯ Fusion information format
© ISO/IEC 2010 – All rights reserved v

Introduction
Biometric systems embed disparate technologies and comparison algorithms. Although some of these have
been published, most are entirely proprietary. Most current verification or identification applications employ a
single biometric modality. That is, information is acquired from a body part or an exhibited behavior with the
intent of more or less uniquely identifying the individual. For example, an access control system can image the
hand and use geometrical features. A social benefits program can collect fingerprints from applicants as input
to a one-to-many duplicate search. Different biometric modes offer varying amounts of discriminative
information and have different acquisition related problems. The effect is that biometric systems are to some
extent fallible and, moreover, they exhibit different failure modes. This affords opportunities to combine
technologies or algorithms to improve performance and/or usability. Such combination is known as fusion.
Fusion can be multi-modal (e.g. observing the biometric characteristics, face and finger), multi-algorithmic (e.g.
face recognition algorithms A and B), multi-instance (e.g. index finger and thumb), multi-sensorial (e.g. optical
and ultrasound fingerprint sensor) or multi-presentation (e.g. three images of a user's face).
This part of ISO/IEC 29159 addresses the most common and most readily implemented method of fusion:
score-level fusion. This is implemented after two or more systems have processed and matched an
individual's biometric information to one or more enrolled samples and produced scalar comparison scores as
output. The scores can be either genuine (same-person) or impostor (different-person) scores and a fusion
scheme is designed to combine such scores so that the class boundary between genuine and impostor scores
is refined.
Distributions of comparison scores are unique to each biometric comparison subsy
...