On Efficiency and Effectiveness Tradeoffs in High-Throughput Facial Biometric Recognition Systems

This research discusses the evaluation of biometric systems that are designed to process hundreds to tens of thousands of individuals in short time spans. We propose a method for evaluating a system's performance across capture attempts for the purpose of identifying characteristics that are advantageous in these high-throughput environments. We also present a novel modification to the traditionally accepted biometric performance metrics of failure-to-acquire, and true-match rate. Namely, this paradigm shift holds that these metrics are a function of time and, as such, vary with the time available for a biometric system to interact with a user. This research demonstrates the utility of these time-based metrics in evaluating the performance of multiple, commercially available, high-throughput systems. We show that different biometric systems have notably different time-based performance curves using a corpus of data collected during the 2018 Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S&T) Biometric Technology Rally. These curves and the deviations between them are useful when quantifying the suitability of a technology, evaluated via scenario testing, for deployment in an operational environment where the throughput of the target population is a key performance parameter.