Abstract
The rapid advancement of authentication systems and their increasing reliance on biometrics for faster and more accurate user verification experience, highlight the critical need for a reliable framework to evaluate the suitability of biometric modalities for specific applications. Currently, the most widely known evaluation framework is a comparative table from 1998, which no longer adequately captures recent technological developments or emerging vulnerabilities in biometric systems. To address these challenges, this work revisits the evaluation of biometric modalities through an expert survey involving 24 biometric specialists. The findings indicate substantial shifts in property ratings across modalities. For example, face recognition, shows improved ratings due to technological progress, while fingerprint, shows decreased reliability because of emerging vulnerabilities and attacks. Further analysis of expert agreement levels across rated properties highlighted the consistency of the provided evaluations and ensured the reliability of the ratings. Finally, expert assessments are compared with dataset-level uncertainty across 55 biometric datasets, revealing strong alignment in most modalities and underscoring the importance of integrating empirical evidence with expert insight. Moreover, the identified expert disagreements reveal key open challenges and help guide future research toward resolving them.
Abstract (translated)
身份验证系统的快速发展及其对生物识别技术的日益依赖，以实现更快、更准确的用户验证体验，凸显了评估特定应用中生物识别模式适用性可靠框架的关键需求。目前最广为人知的评估框架是一个来自1998年的比较表格，它已不再充分反映最近的技术进步或新兴的安全漏洞。为解决这些挑战，这项工作通过一项涉及24位生物识别专家的调查，重新审视了对生物特征模态的评价。 研究结果表明，不同模态的属性评分发生了显著变化。例如，面部识别由于技术的进步而获得了更高的评分，而指纹识别则因新兴的安全漏洞和攻击而可靠性下降。进一步分析专家在评级特性上的共识水平，突显出所提供评估的一致性，并确保了评级的可靠性。 最后，通过将专家评估与55个生物特征数据集中的不确定性进行对比，发现大多数模态之间存在很强的一致性，强调了结合实证证据和专家见解的重要性。此外，所识别的专家分歧揭示了一些关键的研究挑战，并有助于指导未来研究解决这些问题的方向。
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.13874
