Biometric Special Databases and Software

Friction Ridge

• Special Database 303: Forensic Decision Making on Suitability for Identification Judgments (National Institute of Justice grant 2010-DN-BX-K270) (user's guide available).
• Special Database 302: Nail to Nail (N2N) Fingerprint Challenge (user's guide available).
• Special Database 301: Nail to Nail (N2N) Fingerprint Challenge Dry Run (user's guide available).
• Special Database 300: Uncompressed Plain and Rolled Images from Fingerprint Cards (user's guide available).

Mugshot/Face

• Special Database 32: Multiple Encounter Dataset (MEDS I & II)
  • MEDS I user's guide.
  • MEDS II  user's guide.
• Special Database 18: NIST Mugshot Identification Database (user's guide available).
• Color FERET: Facial image database collected in the mid-1990s.

OCR

• Special Database 2: NIST Structured Forms Reference Set of Binary Images  (user's guide available).
• Special Database 6: NIST Structured Forms Reference Set 2 of Binary Images (user's guide available).
• Special Database 19: NIST Handprinted Forms and Characters Database (user's guide available).
• Public Domain OCR: NIST Form-based Handprint Recognition System.

Software

• OpenLQM: Open source C++ port of LQMetric, a tool for assessing quality of latent impression fingerprint images.
• NFIQ 2: Exemplar fingerprint image quality assessment. Reference implementation of ISO/IEC 29794-4:2024.
• Biometric Evaluation Framework: C++ code for running biometric technology evaluations.
• NBIS: NIST Biometric Image Software (formerly "NFIS").
• NIST Fingerprint Registration and Comparison Tool (NFRaCT)

Retired Databases 

Friction Ridge 

• Special Database 4: NIST 8-bit Gray Scale Images of Fingerprint Image Groups.  This database has been discontinued and is no longer available.
• Special Database 9: NIST 8-bit Gray Scale Images of Mated Fingerprint Card Pairs. This database has been discontinued and is no longer available.
• Special Database 10: NIST Supplemental Fingerprint Card Data (SFCD) for NIST Special Database 9 with include rolled fingerprints and harder to find fingerprint classifications like arch, tented arch and low count loops.   This database has been discontinued and is no longer available.
• Special Database 14: NIST Mated Fingerprint Card Pairs 2. 
   Has 2,700 ten-print card pairs of rolled fingerprints (no plain impressions).  This database has been discontinued and is no longer available.
• NIST Special Database 27 and 27A: Fingerprint minutiae from latent and matching tenprint images This database has been discontinued and is no longer available.
• Special Database 29: Plain and Rolled Images from Paired Fingerprint Cards in 500 pixels per inch.  This database has been discontinued and is no longer available.
• Special Database 30: Plain and Rolled Images from Paired Fingerprint Cards in 1000 pixels per inch. This database has been discontinued and is no longer available.

OCR

• NIST Machine-Print Database of Gray Scale and Binary Images (MPDB): The database was previously known as Special Database 8. This database has been discontinued and is no longer available.
• NIST Scientific and Technical Document Database: This database was formerly known as Special Database 20. This database has been discontinued and no longer being supported but will be available upon request.
• NIST Federal Register Document Image Database: Volume 1: This database was formerly known as Special Database 25. This database has been discontinued and no longer being supported but will be available upon request.