A Chinese enterprise is taking the lead in formulating international standards for multi-modal feature-level fusion for biometric identification, reflecting not only the level of China's technological capability, but also laying a solid foundation for the global promotion of the technology.

A woman pays for her bill by face at a store in the Hong Kong International Airport. (Photo/Xinhua)

Ant Financial Services Group, one of China’s main financial technology companies, is taking the lead in formulating the international standards at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world’s leading technical professional institution.

Identification using fingerprints, face and iris have advantages and disadvantages in specific application fields, and also vary in accuracy and costs due to their different requirements.

"Even for facial recognition, there are many technical routes such as 2D face, 3D face, multi-spectral face, etc. There are also different standards and different levels in the same route," said Lei Zhen, a researcher at the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Lei Zhen added that multi-modal biometric identification can identify users with higher precision by fusing multiple human biometric algorithms and verifying each other in a variety of ways, so as to achieve a higher accuracy of user recognition.

Experts predict that compared with the traditional single mode, multi-mode fusion technology is expected to significantly increase the accuracy of existing facial recognition.

Lin Guanchen, an expert on technical standardization at Ant Financial Services Group, said that the main purpose in promoting the establishment of international standards is to standardize the technical requirements of multi-modal fusion, so that a set of standardized application guidelines can be formed.

Specifically, the contents involve technical framework, integration level, business process, functional requirements, performance requirements, security requirements and so on.

Dominant organizations usually take the lead in the formulation of industry standards, and China’s application in the field of biometric recognition is world-leading. China also has a wealth of application scenarios, and some leading enterprises have accumulated a great deal of practical experience, according to Lei Zhen.

"The formulation of standards can standardize the application of the industry," Lin Guanchen said, adding that facial recognition is the most widely used biometric technology at present; the more standardized the technology is used in the industry, the safer and more convenient people's facial scanning will be.

“A Chinese enterprise has taken the lead in the formulation of international standards in the field of biometric identification, reflecting the international community's recognition of China's technical capability and application in this field,” Lei Zhen said.