What and Why?
The purpose of the BioAPI specification is to define an architecture and all necessary interfaces (using C programming language specifications) to allow biometric applications (perhaps distributed across a network) to be integrated from modules provided by different vendors.
The ability for system integrators to produce complete systems using components from multiple vendors is essential in the rapidly changing technology of biometrics. It gives flexibility in the provision of modules, avoids vendor lock-in, provides a degree of future-proofing as the best available biometrics technologies change.
The modules being integrated may be software components containing capture devices, such as fingerprint readers, cameras for face recognition, iris scanners, signature recognition devices, vascular imaging systems, etc.
They can also be modules that provide support for image processing of biometric data, feature extraction (a form of compression that is specific to a given biometric technology and allows direct matching of the compressed formats - for example, the relative distances on the face of eyes, nose, mouth, or the number of ridges between identifiable ridge endings or ridge bifurcations).
In addition, modules that provide archiving and retrieval of biometric records to support matching or searching for a match are also a recognised part of the BioAPI architecture.
Applications can be concerned with personal identification (for example for credit cards), or with more specific areas such as identity card verification, checks for duplicate enrollment, passports, or physical access control in a commercial environment or for airport employees or merchant seamen wishing to go on-shore at their arrival port.
Whilst today a system is commonly built using a single device for a single application, it is likely that in the long term many such applications will interact (securely, and via a network) with a common set of trusted devices (with various security policies and certificates).
It is also expected that future biometrics applications will use multiple biometric modalities (for example, fingerprint, iris, and face), both to improve the accuracy of identification and to cope with people that are missing a finger, or have disability problems that prevent use of iris or face recognition.
BioAPI supports all these use cases.
Read more about this topic: Bio API
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