Assessing the Discriminatory Power of Biometric Verifiers

The task of establishing the distinctiveness of biometric data is important in many types of biometric applications. Earlier work had identified the concept of distance statistics as central to our approach to the individuality of a biometric, and the inferential statistical aspects had been considered crucial in evaluating the individuality of certain biometric data. Here we consider the geometrical aspects, and by using d-dimensional geometry we determine the upper limit on the number of subjects that can be distinguished by a given biometric verifier.