from academic and industrial biometric communities. They established a common benchmark, allowing developers to unambiguously compare their algorithms, and provided an overview of the state-of-the-art in fingerprint recognition. Based on the response of the biometrics community, last editions of FVC were undoubtedly successful initiatives.FVC2004 [4], the Third International Fingerprint Verification Competition, was held in 2004. The contest involved four different databases (three real and one synthetic) [5] collected by using the following sensors and technologies:DB1: optical sensor "V300" by CrossMatch [6];DB2: optical sensor "U.are.U 4000" by Digital Persona [7];DB3: thermal sweeping sensor "FingerChip FCD4B14CB" by Atmel [8]; andDB4: synthetic fingerprint generation by SFinGe v3.0 [9].At the end of the data collection, for each database a total of 120 fingers and 12 impressions per finger (1440 impressions) were gathered. As in previous editions, the size of each database to be used in the test was established as 110 fingers wide and 8 impressions per finger deep (880 fingerprints in all); collecting some additional data gave a margin in case of collection/labeling errors.Fingers from 101 to 110 (set B) have been made available to the participants to allow parameter tuning before the submission of the algorithms; the benchmark is then constituted by fingers numbered from 1 to 100 (set A). Sensor Type Image Size Set A (wxd) Set B (wxd) Resolution DB1 Optical Sensor 640x480 (307 Kpixels) 100x8 10x8 500 dpi DB2 Optical Sensor 328x364 (119 Kpixels) 100x8 10x8 500 dpi DB3 Thermal sweeping Sensor 300x480 (144 Kpixels) 100x8 10x8 512 dpi DB4 SFinGe v3.0 288x384 (108 Kpixels) 100x8 10x8 about 500 dpi The following figure shows a sample image from each database:2. Gentlemen, start your engines!2.1. Compiling and setting up NBISWell, now that we know what NBIS and FVC are, it is time to put the things to work! We'll be considering Linux operating system from now on. :DFirst of all, we need to download NBIS source codes, which are available on NIST's site [2]. At the time this post was being written, the last version was "Release 5.0.0".Once the ZIP file is downloaded, we need to extract its files and rename the main directory by issuing these commands:unzip nbis_v5_0_0.zipmv Rel_5.0.0/ nbis-5.0.0/cd nbis-5.0.0/Then, as a good practice in Linux, let's assume a proper directory to install NBIS files: "/opt/nbis-5.0.0/".mkdir /opt/nbis-5.0.0/./setup.sh /opt/nbis-5.0.0/You might face some dependency issues after running "setup.sh". This means you'll need to previously install some packages on your system. Do it before following the next step! For instance, on CentOS 6.x these packages were needed: cmake, libpng-devel, and libX11-devel.Once "setup.sh" has been executed successfully, you'll run a series of "make" instructions:make configmake itmake installmake catalogVery good! At this time you already have 1) prepared the NBIS source codes, 2) compiled them, 3) installed it on /opt, and 4) created the catalog for libraries and programs.As a suggestion, create a simple Shell Script in order to export system variables, named "nbis-env.sh", and with the following content:#!/bin/bashNBIS_HOME="/opt/nbis-5.0.0"export PATH=$PATH:$NBIS_HOME/bin/export MANPATH=$NBIS_HOME/man/How does it work? Simple! Try executing these commands:cwsq -versionman cwsqNothing happened, but errors, right? Now try typing this:source nbis-env.shFrom now on, NBIS programs and