This document establishes a systematic description of the concepts in the field of biometrics pertaining to recognition of human beings and reconciles variant terms in use in pre-existing biometric standards against the preferred terms, thereby clarifying the use of terms in this field.

Excluded from the scope of this document are concepts (represented by terms) from information technology, pattern recognition, biology, mathematics, etc. Biometrics uses such fields of knowledge as a basis.

In principle, mode specific terms are outside of scope of this document.

Words that are bolded are defined in this document. Words that are not bolded are understood in their natural language sense. The authority for natural language use of terms in this document is the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, Thumb Index Edition (tenth edition, revised, 2002). Words used in their natural language sense are considered out-of-scope for further definition in this document.