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Information Technology Laboratory

Information Access Division

We foster trust in technologies that make sense of complex information relating to human action, behavior, characteristics and communication through the advancement of measurement, evaluation and standards.

The Information Access Division (IAD) is one of six technical divisions in the Information Technology Laboratory.

IAD is known for our world-class evaluation-driven research programs that accelerate the readiness of emerging technologies for widespread deployment. For decades, IAD has fostered community evaluations for foundational Artificial Intelligence in research areas such as human language technologies, biometrics, search, information retrieval and natural language processing.   IAD advances the measurement science, develops novel evaluation paradigms, and performs research to ensure technology is developed and used correctly and efficiently.

Through collaborations with industry, academia, and the federal government, IAD enables the advancement of these technologies and provides the technical underpinnings to support the development of standards.

 

Image representing Multimodal Information
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Multimodal Information Group

The Multimodal Information Group focuses on measurement and evaluation methods to facilitate the use of technologies that provide easier access to multimedia and multilingual information and improve human-computer interface modalities.  

 

Image Representing Digital Video Exchange Standards
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Retrieval Group

The Retrieval Group facilitates retrieval research involving large, unstructured text files by providing test collections and organizing the Text REtrieval Conference (TREC) and its proceedings. The group focuses mainly on collections to support specific information retrieval sub-tasks, such as cross-language retrieval and multimedia retrieval.

 

Image representing biometrics
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Image Group

The Image Group focuses on developing standards, measurements, evaluations, and best practice guidelines for biometric technologies. The Group promotes accuracy and interoperability by working closely with other government agencies, law enforcement, industry, and academia to support needs in the biometrics community.

Digital contents concept. Social networking service. Streaming video. NFT. Non-fungible token.
Credit: Shutterstock

Visualization and Usability Group

The Visualization and Usability Group performs research to develop user-centered measurement and evaluation methods, guidelines, and standards by applying human factors, cognitive science, user-centered design, and usability principles to improve human system interaction. 

 

 

Projects and Programs

AI User Trust

Ongoing
The Visualization and Usability Group’s AI User Trust project provided foundational work for our new AI User Trust Measurement research, and continues to inform our larger Human-Centered AI program. Please read more about our current work on those pages. The information that follows is maintained

ANSI/NIST-ITL Standard

Ongoing
Recent Announcements Save the Date: NIST welcomes your participation in the ANSI/NIST-ITL in-person workshop on April 22-24, 2025 to update the ANSI/NIST-ITL standard. The workshop will be held at the NIST NCCoE facility in Rockville, Maryland. In-person participation is strongly encouraged and

Biometric Compression Information

Ongoing
Friction Ridge Compression On February 24, 2014 we proudly announced the release of the final version of this guidance! You can download the final version of the guidance here: NIST Special Publication 500-289 Final (02/24/2014) More recently, on April 7, 2016, we're proud to announce the release of

Biometric Quality

Ongoing
Quality analysis is a technical challenge because it is most helpful when the measures reflect the performance sensitivities of one or more target biometric matchers. NIST addressed this problem in August 2004 when it issued the NIST Fingerprint Image Quality algorithm, which was designed to be

Software

NFIQ 2

The biometrics community recommended a new, open source, generalized version of NFIQ to be developed in consultation and collaboration with users and industry.

Video Analytic Quality Measurement Tools

This Tool set has been created to facilitate video quality metric research and foster future R&D. Development was sponsored as part of video quality research by

Biometric Evaluation Framework

Biometric Evaluation Framework is a set of C++ classes, error codes, and design patterns used to create a common environment to provide logging, data management

Awards

Press Coverage

Contacts

Division Chief

Deputy Division Chief