Expanding the Dimensions in Biometrics

The upcoming increasing usage of biometrics for identification and authentication purposes addresses a wide area of applications, from convenience to security and from privacy to public administration applications including sovereign areas: The EU-Council regulations on standards for security features and biometrics in EU citizens' passport initiated the introduction of digital facial and fingerprint images in all future European passports. At the same time technical specifications established by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) will be implemented in the EU member states in order to boost biometrics supported border controls.

According to the ICAO recommendations, biometric-enabled border control will be based on 2D face recognition technology. However the biometric performance e.g. of existing 2D face recognition systems are extremely sensitive to pose variations, illumination changes, sensor conditions, and other disturbance factors that might degrade the intended image quality. Further mechanisms for liveness detection and for protection against spoofing, identity hiding attacks or identity misuse are required to improve the security level of biometric systems. Consequently the goal of research is to improve this technology for broader usage e.g. such like non-supervised environments.

The Workshop "Expanding the Dimensions in Biometrics" will address these challenges. The workshop is jointly organized by CAST, the German Federal Office for Information Security, the expert group BIOSIG inside the Gesellschaft für Informatik and the 3DFace research consortium. The full day event is focused on reports in enhancing and improving the recognition rate of biometric systems in general, detailed aspects such like 3D face recognition technology research, including fusion with 2D face recognition technologies, quality requirements and the application of 3D in secure environments. The day will also cover research for enabling privacy protection of biometric templates. Furthermore the European Commission will present the biometric research agenda in the 7^th FP.