SDKs -
Biometric Authentication

AwareXM™

MINEX-Certified, ANSI/INCITS 378-Compliant Fingerprint Minutiae Extraction, Template Generation, and Matching for Biometric Verification

AwareXM is an SDK that provides MINEX-certified, INCITS 378-compliant fingerprint minutiae extraction, template generation, and biometric verification, such as required for PIV credential personalization and authentication. AwareXM includes other features, such as Aware’s QualityCheck and NFIQ fingerprint image quality scoring. AwareXM provides support for several biometric standards including ISO/IEC 19794-2 for minutiae-based template data formatting and ILO SID-0002 for seafarer identity cards.

Because AwareXM is MINEX-certified, it is interoperable with template extraction and matching algorithms from many other vendors. This means that fingerprint templates generated and stored on a card using AwareXM can be biometrically verified by any other MINEX-certified matcher. Conversely, AwareXM can be used to verify any template generated by a MINEX-certified extraction algorithm.

AwareXM is also available in a version that is not MINEX-certified but achieves better matching performance when the AwareXM extraction and matching are paired.

AwareXM works seamlessly with PIVPack and ICAOPack to incorporate biometric verification into a comprehensive enrollment, personalization, and reader software solution. 

About MINEX and PIV

NIST is the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a U.S. government agency.  In order to assess the interoperability of fingerprint minutiae templates—that is, could minutiae extracted by one algorithm be matched by an algorithm of other vendors—they conducted a test called MINEX.  The test was conducted primarily to assess whether fingerprint minutiae-based templates could achieve a sufficient level of interoperability for effective biometric verification (low false accept and false reject rates), or rather would images be required.  A requirement for participation in the MINEX test is ANSI/INCITS 378 compliance. ANSI/INCITS 378 is a standard for fingerprint template data formatting. On an on-going basis, the MINEX tests yield lists of both extract algorithms and match algorithms that achieved a minimum threshold of performance when used in conjunction with algorithms of the various participants, and are thus “MINEX-certified”.

The FIPS 201 standard for “PIV” federal employee credentialing requires that fingerprint templates from two fingers be stored on each ID card in INCITS 378 format.  GSA requires that only extraction algorithms certified by the MINEX test be used to generate templates for storage on PIV ID cards.