Introduction to the Special Issue on Biometrics: Progress and Directions

The guest editors provide an overview of the articles selected for this special issue. The issue's goal is to document the current state-of-the-art, acknowledge the latest breakthroughs achieved by scientists working in the area of biometric recognition, and identify future promising research areas. It is thought the selection of papers discussed should give readers a good idea of where researchers have been focusing, both on long- studied problems still needing more work and on newer challenges. A fundamental of the field of biometrics is an ever-increasing need for better recognition and stronger security. But, as public and commercial biometric deployments increase in number, there is also more need to understand privacy issues and to provide greater ease-of-use. The volume and quality of papers in this special issue indicate that much progress has been made in many aspects of the biometrics field and that there are challenging and promising future directions still to follow.