Open source reference systems for biometric verification of identity

This paper focuses on the common evaluation framework which was developed by the BioSecure Network of Excellence during the European FP6 project BioSecure (Biometrics for Secure authentication). This framework, which is composed of open-source reference systems, publicly available databases, assessment protocols and benchmarking results, introduces a new experimental methodology for conducting, reporting and comparing experiments for biometric systems, participating to standardisation efforts. Its use will permit to make a link between different published works. It provides also the necessary tools to assure the reproducibility of the benchmarking biometric experiments. This framework can be considered as a re-liable and innovative process to evaluate the progress of research in the field of bio-metrics.