BXGrid: A Data Repository and Workflow Abstraction for Biometrics Research

Research in the field of biometrics depends on the effective management of large amounts of data and computation. Current research projects in biometrics acquire many terabytes of images and video of subjects in many different modes and situations, annotated with detailed metadata. To study the effectiveness of new algorithms for identifying people, researchers must exhaustively compare large numbers of measurements with a variety of custom functions. The quality of the end results is often dependent upon the sheer amount of data marshalled to support it.To address these challenges, we are constructing BXGrid, an end-to-end computing system for conducting biometrics research. BXGrid assists with the entire research process from data acquisition all the way to generating results for publication. Because the entire chain of research is kept consistently within one system, multiple users may easily share tools and results, building off of each other's work. BXGrid also helps to ensure scientific integrity by automating a variety of consistency checks, external data audits, and reproduction of existing results.