Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Information Technology Laboratory

Information Access Division

Information Access Division Highlights - FY 2008

July 2008

ITL's Jonathon Phillips Named IAPR Fellow:Dr. P. Jonathon Phillips, Information Access Division, was recently selected as one of the 2008 International Association of Pattern Recognition (IAPR) Fellows. Jonathon received this award for his extensive contributions to face recognition, empirical evaluations and the biometrics field. This prestigious award is presented annually to individuals who have made a substantial contribution to the Pattern Recognition community. Dr. Phillips is currently the program manager for the NIST Multiple Biometric Grand Challenge (MBGC) technology development program, aimed at improving performance of both face and iris recognition through a series of challenge problems and evaluation. Dr Phillips' work in biometrics has been reported in print media of record including the New York Times and the Economist. Dr. Phillips is an Editor for IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI), and guest editor of an issue of Proceedings of the IEEE on biometrics. He will receive the IAPR Fellow award at a special ceremony to be held during the next International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR) in December 2008. Contact: Martin Herman, ext. 4495

June 2008

ITL and CSTL Organize the 2nd Annual Workshop on 2D and 3D Content Representation, Analysis, and Retrieval:

The Information Access Division held a Biometric Image Quality Workshop November 7-8, 2007 in Gaithersburg, Maryland, supported by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), US-VISIT office and the Science and Technology Directorate, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Defense Biometric Task Force, and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Subcommittee on Biometrics and Identity Management. This Workshop provided a forum for biometrics experts to share their research, to discuss problems, new developments, and capabilities vis-a-vis operational requirements, and to identify research needs, testing requirements, and standardization gaps in biometrics image quality.

This was a sequel to the Biometric Quality Workshop hosted by NIST in March 2006. The goal was to help improve accuracy of biometric systems by incorporating quality assessment technologies into the sample acquisition process. It aims to assess current quality measurement capabilities and to identify technologies, factors, operational paradigms, and standards that can measurably improve quality.

Over 150 attendees from ten countries representing academia, industry and government participated. The forty one presentations covered the role of biometric sample quality in operational identification and verifications system, biometric quality capabilities, research and development, and standardization. Attendees included representatives from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Army Biometric Task Force, UK National Physical Laboratory, Bundesamt fur Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI)-Germany and Bundeskriminalamt (BKA)-Germany, University of Maryland, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Purdue University, University of Notre Dame, University of West Virginia, University Autonoma de Madrid (Spain), Carleton University (Canada), University of Bologna (Italy), University of Brno (Czech Republic), Inha University (Korea), and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne. Industry participants included Sagem Morpho, NEC, Cogent Systems, Motorola, CrossMatch, L-1 Identity, LG Electronics, Iritech, Aware, Authenti-Corp, Noblis, and Bearing Point.

Biometric sample quality assessment algorithms are increasingly being used to improve performance of operational systems. For example, the US Visitor and Immigrant Status Indication Technology (US-VISIT), Personal Identity Verification (PIV),and the European Union Visa Information System (EU VIS) programs each mandate the measurement and reporting of quality scores of captured images. Accordingly, quality assessment is the subject of active research, and standardization is underway in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO/IEC 29794) to support uniform interpretation and interoperability of quality scores,

Proceedings and additional details are available at: http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/894.03/quality/workshop07.

Contact: Elham Tabassi (ITL), ext. 5292; Patrick Grother (ITL), ext. 4157

ITL Kicks-Off the Multiple Biometric Grand Challenge:The Information Access Division (IAD) in ITL recently kicked off a new project called the Multiple Biometric Grand Challenge (MBGC). Over 100 people from seven different countries attended the first MBGC Workshop held on April 18, 2008 in Arlington, Virginia. The MBGC Program Manager is Jonathon Phillips (IAD).The MBGC plans to investigate, test and improve the performance of face and iris recognition technologies on both still imagery and video sequences through a series of challenge problems and evaluations. The evaluation methodology in this program has been used successfully on several previous IAD programs, which laid the foundation for rapidly improving a technology's state-of-the-art performance. The Face Recognition Grand Challenge (FRGC) (2004-2006) and the Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) 2006 were good examples of this methodology's success. The FRVT 2006 report can be downloaded from http://face.nist.gov/frvt/frvt2006/FRVT2006andICE2006LargeScaleReport.pdf, Continuing this successful methodology, the MBGC will provide the test data, a baseline algorithm, and software infrastructure to participants on which to test and improve their face and iris recognition algorithms. MBGC participants will report their results back to NIST and to the MBGC community at periodic workshops. The MBGC Evaluation Team has designed three challenge problems: 1) the Portal Video Challenge, 2) the Still Face Challenge, and 3) the Video Face Challenge. The Portal Video Challenge will encourage face and iris recognition algorithm development on Near Infrared and High Definition video sequences taken as people walk through a portal. This application will enable rapid acquisition of biometrics at ports of entry while, at the same time, reducing invasiveness during acquisition. The Portal Video Challenge will also provide an opportunity for fusion of face and iris recognition technologies. The Still Face Challenge will focus on recognition from unconstrained indoor and outdoor imagery. The purpose of this challenge is to improve recognition performance on lower resolution still imagery and on imagery similar to mug shots, passports and credential cards. The Video Face Challenge seeks to improve face recognition capability in outdoor scenarios from video sequences taken at a distance. This challenge problem includes matching both still images against video and video against video. The MBGC, after it's completed, will be followed by an independent multiple biometric evaluation to document the new state-of-the-art and verify participants' self-reported results. So far, over 100 organizations from 21 different countries have expressed an interest in the MBGC program.The MBGC is sponsored by multiple U.S. Government agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, Science & Technology directorate; Director of National Intelligence's Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA); the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) and Operational Technology Division (OTD); the multi-agency Technical Support Working Group (TSWG); and the Department of Defense's Biometric Task Force (BTF). More information is available on the MBGC website at http://face.nist.gov/mbgc. Contact: Jonathon Phillips, ext. 5348; Cathy Schott, ext. 5594

May 2008

ITL's Wo Chang Receives ISO Award:

Wo Chang, Information Access Division, received an award for Special Appreciation for Excellent Standards Management from the International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission (ISO/IEC) Joint Technical Committee (JTC) 1/Subcommittee (SC) 29 Working Group 11 -- Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). In addition, a Letter of Appreciation was sent to the NIST Director, Dr. James Turner, from Dr. Leonardo Chiariglione, Convenor, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11 noting Chang's contributions to MPEG and thanking NIST for the "great standard support for advancing the state of the art of multimedia into the industry."

The award citation is written as:

"ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11 (MPEG - Moving Picture Experts Group) "Coding of Moving Pictures and Audio," recognizes and appreciates the resources provided by the National Institute of Standards Technology for enabling the outstanding performance, dedication, patience, creativity, and organization shown by Mr. Wo Chang for his excellent management of standard specifications, working documents, reference software, and testing materials that has played a vital role in the advancement of international multimedia standards."

For over seven years, in addition to actively participating in the MPEG standard technology development, Chang provided the standard documents management infrastructure for ISO's MPEG Working Group. Chang's involvement included management support via web services for over 24 gigabytes of 20,000 archived standard documents (growing by 500 at each quarterly meeting), reference software, and testing materials serving over 3000 international experts from over 25 countries.

CONTACT: Martin Herman (ITL), ext. 4495

ITL's Wo Chang Receives INCITS Excellent Standards Management Award:

Wo Chang, Information Access Division, was presented a Special Recognition for Excellent Standards Management Award by the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) during the meeting of the INCITS L3 Technical Committee on Coding of Audio, Picture, Multimedia and Hypermedia Information on February 26, 2008. Wo Chang has served as Deputy Chair for the INCITS L3.1 Working Group, Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) Development Activity, in addition to actively participating in the MPEG standard technology development. He also provided document management support for over 700 archived documents serving approximately 500 U.S. companies.

The award citation reads:

"INCITS (InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards) L3 "Coding of Audio, Picture, Multimedia, and Hypermedia Information," recognizes and appreciates the resources provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology for enabling the outstanding performance, dedication, patience, creativity, and organization shown by Mr. Wo Chang for his excellent leadership as L3.1 MPEG Deputy Chair and management of standard specifications, working documents, reference software, and testing materials that has played a vital role in the advancement of international multimedia standards."

INCITS L3 activities and project development are conducted at the international level for the standardization of coded representation of audio, picture, multimedia and hypermedia information, and of sets of compression and control functions for use with such information, such as: audio information, bi-level and limited bits-per-pixel still pictures; computer graphics images; moving pictures and associated audio, multimedia and hypermedia information for real-time final form interchange; and audio visual interactive scriptware.

CONTACT: Martin Herman (ITL), ext. 4495

Patent awarded for ITL's Roberts' Refreshable Scanning Tactile Graphic Display:

On April 1, 2008, NIST was awarded U.S. Patent No. 7,352,356, "Refreshable Scanning Tactile Graphic Display for Localized Sensory Stimulation"; inventors are John Roberts, Information Access Division and Nicholas Guttenberg, former student in ITL. This invention enables devices allowing users to "view" text, Braille, and imagery using the sense of touch, both for accessibility for blind users, and for enhancing a virtual environment. Unlike haptic display, which uses force feedback to "push" against the user's muscles, tactile display makes use of the finely detailed, scanning sense of touch in the fingertips. Tactile display can be combined with haptics, for example allowing a user both to squeeze a virtual orange and to feel its textured surface. Tactile display can be used for teleoperation (greatly improving the user's control of a robot built with a sense of touch), and even (with future miniaturization of components) to give detailed sense of touch to the gloves in an environment or pressure suit.

The user places a finger against a fingertip-sized display surface with hundreds of "stimulus points", typically round-tipped pins, which are set in a pattern that is rapidly updated as the user moves the finger and the display, creating the sensation that the finger is moving over a detailed surface matching the imagery in the controlling computer. The display can be mounted on a computer mouse or in the fingertips of a data glove.

NIST innovations include use of pressure or force-based touch stimulus rather than specified displacement of the pins, use of differential pressure to convey tactile information, and use of human skin's natural elasticity to help control the pins. All of these are directed toward achieving a good match to the human sense of touch, and toward improving manufacturability and lowering cost.

ELIA Life Technology, Inc. of New York, N.Y. has licensed this technology for accessibility applications. The company has also licensed another NIST patent, No. 7,009,595, for a low-cost two-dimensional tactile graphic display for accessibility.

Contact: John Roberts (ITL), ext. 5683.

March 2008

ITL's Schipani speaks at Human Factors & Ergonomics Society:On January 22, 2008, "Human Factors & Ergonomics Society" Potomac Chapter members and colleagues met in Bethesda to hear Dr. Salvatore Schipani, Information Access Division, describe a NIST methodology for developing performance standards for Urban Search and Rescue robots. Schipani presented experimental results concerning a hypothesized maze test scenario for use in assessing navigation and situation awareness maintenance.Currently, the majority of user-robot interactions during emergency scenarios are limited to direct control, with the most common operator interface a video feed from the robotic platform to user. Unfortunately, operators frequently incur issues when dynamically attempting to perceive and evaluate remote environments, causing them to generate and subsequently execute sub-optimal control decisions. Schipani found that significant differences in task completion and decision-making times enabled classification of robot platforms based on performance. He also found that the degree of effort exerted in correcting navigational errors, as well as the amount of encounters with obstacles, correlated with times required to make decisions; the longer it took to make a decision, the greater the probability that this decision was incorrect. The results validated the hypothesis of a maze as beneficial in eliciting data necessary for assessing performance during human-controlled robot manipulation.Discussion at the meeting culminated in the need for and methods of conducting impartial practitioner-oriented assessments under operationally relevant yet experimentally controlled conditions. Specifically, there is a need for development of effective interface design guidelines offering fused sensor information. This is in contrast to today's approach of compelling users to mentally combine data from multiple sources.This effort is focused on the development of performance measures concerned with robot platform technical readiness levels in the domains of homeland security, crisis response, hazardous environment operations, and medical emergencies.Contact: Salvatore Schipani (ITL), ext. 5846

February 2008

ITL hosts Biometric Image Quality Workshop:The Information Access Division held a Biometric Image Quality Workshop November 7-8, 2007 in Gaithersburg, Maryland, supported by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), US-VISIT office and the Science and Technology Directorate, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Defense Biometric Task Force, and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Subcommittee on Biometrics and Identity Management. This Workshop provided a forum for biometrics experts to share their research, to discuss problems, new developments, and capabilities vis-a-vis operational requirements, and to identify research needs, testing requirements, and standardization gaps in biometrics image quality. This was a sequel to the Biometric Quality Workshop hosted by NIST in March 2006. The goal was to help improve accuracy of biometric systems by incorporating quality assessment technologies into the sample acquisition process. It aims to assess current quality measurement capabilities and to identify technologies, factors, operational paradigms, and standards that can measurably improve quality. Over 150 attendees from ten countries representing academia, industry and government participated. The forty one presentations covered the role of biometric sample quality in operational identification and verifications system, biometric quality capabilities, research and development, and standardization. Attendees included representatives from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Army Biometric Task Force, UK National Physical Laboratory, Bundesamt fur Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI)-Germany and Bundeskriminalamt (BKA)-Germany, University of Maryland, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Purdue University, University of Notre Dame, University of West Virginia, University Autonoma de Madrid (Spain), Carleton University (Canada), University of Bologna (Italy), University of Brno (Czech Republic), Inha University (Korea), and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne. Industry participants included Sagem Morpho, NEC, Cogent Systems, Motorola, CrossMatch, L-1 Identity, LG Electronics, Iritech, Aware, Authenti-Corp, Noblis, and Bearing Point. Biometric sample quality assessment algorithms are increasingly being used to improve performance of operational systems. For example, the US Visitor and Immigrant Status Indication Technology US-VISIT), Personal Identity Verification (PIV),and the European Union Visa Information System (EU VIS) programs each mandate the measurement and reporting of quality scores of captured images. Accordingly, quality assessment is the subject of active research, and standardization is underway in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO/IEC 29794) to support uniform interpretation and interoperability of quality scores,Proceedings and additional details are available at: http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/894.03/quality/workshop07. Contact: Elham Tabassi (ITL), ext. 5292; Patrick Grother (ITL), ext. 4157

November 2007

ITL holds session on Human-Robot Interaction at PerMIS 07 (Schipani):Researchers in the Information Access Division (IAD) chaired a Special Session focused on human-robot interaction (HRI) at the recent Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems Workshop (PerMIS 07) held at NIST August 28-30, 2007. Salvatore Schipani and Brian Antonishek (IAD) co-chaired the Special Session on "Human-Robot Interface Issues". The majority of user-robot interactions during emergency scenarios has been limited to direct control, with the most common operator interface being a video feed from the robotic platform to the user. Unfortunately, operators frequently incur issues when attempting to perceive and evaluate remote environments, causing them to generate and subsequently execute sub-optimal control decisions. This special session attended to the need for, and methods of, conducting impartial practitioner oriented assessments under operationally relevant yet experimentally controlled conditions. The assessments would be directed toward the development of effective interface design guidelines offering fused sensor information, rather than compelling users to mentally combine data from multiple sources.Narratives of experimental research were presented by Dr. Schipani and Mr. Antonishek, Dr. Ellen Hass (U.S. Army Research, Development, and Engineering Command), and Dr. Marc Steinberg (Office of Naval Research). Additionally, Mr. Chris Stachowiak (U.S. Army Research Laboratory) demonstrated an experimental "multi-modal" information system consisting of visual, three-dimensional audio, and tactile displays. It was shown how such an array may assist in decreasing decision times, lower cognitive workloads, and improve the situational awareness of telerobotic operators. Annual "PerMIS" events, sponsored by NIST's Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory, have become the premier venue for disseminating relevant research concerning Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) and Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) robotic systems. This year, focus was directed to the application of performance measures concerned with technical readiness levels in the domains of homeland security, emergency response, military defense, hazardous environments, and medical emergencies. CONTACT: Sal Schipani (ITL), ext. 5846

October 2007

ITL Publishes Proceedings of Text Retrieval Conference TREC 2006 (Voorhees):The Information Access Division has published the proceedings of the fifteenth annual Text REtrieval Conference, TREC 2006, as NIST Special Publication 500-272. The TREC workshop series is sponsored by NIST and the Disruptive Technology Office (DTO) of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to support the text retrieval industry by providing the infrastructure necessary for large-scale evaluation of text retrieval methodologies. TREC 2006, the most recent workshop in the series, was held at NIST on November 14-17, 2006 and was attended by approximately 175 people. The 107 participating organizations included academic, commercial, and government groups from 17 different countries.The proceedings contain an overview summarizing the retrieval tasks and main results of the conference, papers that were presented at the conference, and evaluation reports for each organization's results. The proceedings also contain "track" reports, where a track is a focus on a particular retrieval subproblem. TREC 2006 contained seven tracks, including question answering, detecting spam in an email stream, enterprise search, search on (almost) terabyte-scale document sets, and information access within the genomics domain. Two new tracks explored blog search and providing support for legal discovery of electronic documents. For each track, TREC provides participants with a document set and a set of questions; participating systems return the best responses from the document set for each question. Document sets ranged in size from approximately 160,000 biomedical journal articles to 25 million web pages.There were two main themes in TREC 2006 that were supported by the different tracks. The first theme was exploring broader information contexts than in previous TRECs. This was accomplished by exploring both different document genres (blogs, email, corporate repositories, newswire, scientific documents, web pages) and different retrieval tasks (ad hoc and known-item search, focused responses, classification). The second theme of the conference was a focus on creating new evaluation methodologies. The need for new methodologies is caused by the extension to new retrieval tasks as well as the increased size of the data collections.CONTACT: Ellen Voorhees, ext. 3761.

Information technology

Created November 12, 2014, Updated August 25, 2016