Sample Exercises

Chapter 6: Multibiometrics
1. List specific advantages of multibiometric systems compared to unibiometric systems.
2. What are the advantages of score level fusion over fusion at the sensor,
feature, and decision levels?
3. Consider the general minimum error rate Bayes decision rule in equation
(6.6). Suppose that we assume the following: (i) the match scores of differQM
ent matchers are statistically independent, i.e., p(s|j ) = m=1 p(sm |j ),j =
0, 1, and (ii) the prior probabilities of the genuine and impostor classes
are equal, i.e., P (1 ) = P (0 ) = (1/2).
(a) Show that the minimum error rate Bayes decision rule can be simplified to the product rule.
(b) Let us further assume that the marginal posterior probabilities do
not deviate dramatically from the prior probabilities for each class,
i.e.,P (j |sm ) = P (j )(1 + j,m ), where j,m is a constant, 0 <
j,m << 1; j = 0, 1; m = 1, 2, , M . Show that the minimum
error rate Bayes decision rule can be simplified toQ
the sum rule.
M
(Hint: If higher-order delta terms are neglected, m=1 (1 + j,m )
PM
1 + m=1 j,m .)
4. Let s1 and s2 be the match scores output by a fingerprint matcher and a
face matcher, respectively. Suppose that the match scores have the following conditional distributions: p(s1 |genuine) N (71, 16), p(s1 |impostor)
N (50, 9), p(s2 |genuine) N (56, 16), and p(s2 |impostor) N (50, 9),
where N (, 2 ) represents a Gaussian distribution with mean and standard deviation 2 . Further assume that the following Z-score normalization is applied to the match scores prior to fusion: gm (sm ) = (sm 50)/3,
for m = 1, 2.
(a) What will be the conditional distributions of the normalized genuine
and impostor match scores for the two matchers?
(b) Let the fused match score be obtained using the sum of scores fusion
rule, i.e., h(s1 , s2 ) = (g1 (s1 ) + g2 (s2 )). What will be the conditional
distributions of the fused match scores for the genuine and impostor
classes?
1

(c) Suppose the following decision rule is employed: Assign (s1 , s2 ) to

the genuine class if h(s1 , s2 ) > , else assign (s1 , s2 ) to the impostor
class. Here, (, ). Show that the above sum of scores
fusion rule will lead to a higher EER compared to the best individual
matcher. Explain why the above result is intuitively correct, though
biometric fusion is generally expected to lead to a better recognition
performance than each of the individual matchers.
(d) Consider the weighted sum rule fusion that determines the fused score
as follows: h(s1 , s2 ) = (wg1 (s1 ) + (1 w)g2 (s2 )), where w [0, 1].
Let the fused score obtained using weighted sum rule be used in the
decision rule shown in (c). What should be the minimum value of w,
so that the EER of the multibiometric system is lower than the EER
of the best individual matcher?
5. Let s1 and s2 be the match scores output by a fingerprint matcher and a
face matcher, respectively. Suppose that the match scores have the following conditional distributions: p(s1 |genuine) N (71, 9), p(s1 |impostor)
N (50, 9), p(s2 |genuine) N (56, 9), and p(s2 |impostor) N (50, 9), where
N (, 2 ) represents a Gaussian distribution with mean and standard
deviation 2 . Further assume that the two matchers are statistically independent. Show that the likelihood ratio-based fusion rule based on the
above match score distribution is equivalent to the weighted sum rule.
(Hint: Apply logarithm to equation (6.13).)
6. Table 1 provides the match scores output by two iris matchers operating
in the identification mode. The match scores of the first matcher range
from 0 to 100, while the match scores from the second matcher range
from 0 to 1. What will be the decision output by a multibiometric system
that employs the following fusion rules to combine the results of the two
iris matchers: (a) sum of scores fusion with min-max normalization, (b)
highest rank method, (b) Borda count rank fusion method, and (d) logistic
regression rank fusion method (with weights w1 = 0.25 and w2 = 0.75).
7. Why is it important to normalize the scores before performing a sum score
fusion? List the different factors that affect the choice of a normalization
scheme.
8. In the case of identification, is it always better to perform score level fusion
compared to rank level fusion. Construct an example where this is not
the case.
9. What is the effect of using of AND, OR, and Majority rules for decision
level fusion have on the FMR and FNMR of the recognition system?

Table 1: Match scores output by two iris matchers operating in the identification
mode.
User Identity Match score from Match score from
Iris Matcher 1
Iris Matcher 2
A
35
0.20
B
15
0.40
C
48
0.30
D
77
0.35
E
51
0.60
F
38
0.10
G
22
0.05
H
49
0.45
I
25
0.25
J
54
0.18