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PROJECTS/PROGRAMS

# Minutiae Interoperability Exchange (MINEX) Overview

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## Summary

The approval of the INCITS 378 fingerprint template standard creates the possibility of a fully interoperable multivendor marketplace for applications involving fast, economic, and accurate interchange of compact biometric templates. Does the template give accuracy comparable with proprietary (image-based) implementations? Can template data be generated and matched by different vendors without attendant increase in error rates? The MINEX evaluation was designed to answer these questions.

## Description

### MINEX III

Minutiae Interoperability Exchange (MINEX) III is a continuing test of INCITS 378 fingerprint templates, as established in Annex A of NIST SP 800-76-2. The test is used to establish compliance of template generators and template matchers for the U.S. Government's Personal Identity Verification (PIV) program.

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### MINEX II - An assessment of Match-on-Card technology

 MINEX II is the part of the MINEX program dedicated to the evaluation and development of the capabilities of fingerprint minutia matchers running on ISO/IEC 7816 smart cards. MINEX itself is a program of NIST coordinated development efforts aimed at improving the performance and interoperability of core implementations of the INCITS 378 and ISO/IEC 19794-2 fingerprint minutia standards.

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### Ongoing MINEX

**OMINEX has been superseded by MINEX III**

Continuing testing of INCITS 378 interoperability

The Minutiae Interoperability Exchange Test (MINEX) is an ongoing evaluation of the INCITS 378 fingerprint template. The test program has two mandates:
                  - To provide measurements of performance and interoperability of core template encoding and matching capabilities to users, vendors and interested parties.
                  	
                  - To establish compliance for template encoders and matchers for the United States Government's  Personal Identity Verification (PIV) program .
                  

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### MINEX04

The purpose of the "Minutiae Interoperability Exchange Test (MINEX 04)" is to determine the feasibility of using minutiae data (rather than image data) as the interchange medium for fingerprint information between different fingerprint matching systems. MINEX 04 is designed to evaluate whether various populations and combinations of encoding schemes, probe templates, gallery templates, and fingerprint matchers will produce successful matches.	 

##     Associated Product(s)  

INCITS 378 Conformance

NBIS

BiomAPP - Software Tools for Biometric Applications: PIV + MINEXII Match-on-Card

BiomDI - Software tools supporting Standard Biometrics Data Interchange Formats

Fingerprint Minutiae Viewer (FpMV)

NIGOS 

Information technologyBiometrics

## Organizations

                          - NIST Headquarters
                            - Laboratory Programs
                              - Information Technology Laboratory
                                - Information Access Division
                                  - Image Group

## Project Status

## Related NIST Projects

Proprietary Fingerprint Template Evaluations (PFT) Overview

Slap Fingerprint Segmentation Evaluation (Slapseg) Overview

## Related Publications

NIST IR 7477, Revision II, MINEX II Performance of Fingerprint Match-on-Card Algorithms - Phase IV Report

MINEX Performance and Interoperability of the INCITS 378 Fingerprint Template

MINEX II Performance of Fingerprint Match-on-Card Algorithms - Phase II/III Report

MINEX II - Performance of Fingerprint Match-on-Card Algorithms - Evaluation Plan

MINEX II Performance of Fingerprint Match-on-Card Algorithms - Phase II Report

Biometric Data Specification for Personal Identity Verification

## Other Projects

GSA Fips 201 Homepage

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