Examiner Feature Extraction and Matching of Latent and Exemplar Fingerprints

FedBizOpps Announcement Type: Special Notice
Classification Code: R
Subject: Notice of Intent to Sole Source - Examiner Feature Extraction and Matching of Latent and Exemplar Fingerprints

Introduction
This is a notice of intent, not a request for a quotation. A solicitation document will not be issued and quotations will not be requested.

Purpose
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) intends to negotiate a firm-fixed priced contract on a sole source basis with Schwarz Forensic Enterprises, Inc. located at 770 Rustic Green Court, Eldridge, IA 52748-7601. The contract will be for examiner feature extraction and matching of latent and exemplar fingerprints for a six-month period of performance.

Authority
This acquisition is being conducted under the authority of FAR Subpart 13.501 allowing the Contracting Officer (CO) to solicit from one source. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code for this acquisition is 541380 - Testing Laboratories with a size standard of $15 Million.

Background
As part of the Intelligence Advance Research Project Activity (IARPA)'s Nail-to-Nail (N2N) Challenge, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) acquired thousands of latent and exemplar friction ridge images. In turn, NIST released a portion of this data as a dataset entitled "NIST Special Database 302." In its current state, the data is only minimally useful to researchers. At a basic level, we know that a latent friction ridge image came from a particular individual, but not which finger or palm from that individual. NIST is seeking services to accurately match latent friction ridge images with exemplar images by means of extracting and correlating friction ridge features.

Description
The purpose of this acquisition is to obtain Contractor services in support of the following:
• Extract minutia and other friction ridge features required by Extended Feature Set (EFS) Profile 2 from latent and exemplar friction ridge images.
• Use extracted features to find correspondence, matching a subject's latent friction ridge images to their exemplar fingerprint images.
• Record extracted feature and correspondence information in ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2011 Update: 2015 compatible Latent Friction Ridge Feature Search with image file (LFFS) for future research.

The Contractor shall perform the following tasks:
1. Trial extraction and encoding.

1.1. Extract and encode features required by EFS Profile 2 from exemplar rolled friction ridge imagery for one subject, consisting of ten fingers. (Note: "EFS Profile 2" is a standardized specification of fingerprint features and annotations. Items required from EFS Profile 2 are exhaustively enumerated in detail in the table below.)
1.2. Extract and encode features required by EFS Profile 2 from one latent friction ridge image from the same subject.
1.3. Discover and encode corresponding features
1.4. Submit output to NIST for record validation and adherence to the statement of work.

2. Extract and encode features required by EFS Profile 2 from friction ridge exemplar images for 32 subjects, each consisting of 10 fingers, totaling 320 total friction ridge exemplar images.

3. Extract and encode features required by EFS Profile 2 for latent friction ridge imagery from those same 32 subjects, each consisting of 50 images, totaling 1600 latent friction ridge images.

4. Discover and encode corresponding minutia from (2) and (3).

5. Deliver output of (2)-(4) to NIST. All deliverables shall be encoded as ANSI/NIST ITL 1-2011 Update: 2015 files, with the exception of the single CSV file.

Sole Source Determination
The sole source determination is based on the following:

Schwarz Forensic Enterprises, Inc. (SFE) is uniquely qualified to provide the required microscope system for the following reasons:

• NIST was a co-investigator in the IARPA Nail to Nail (N2N) Challenge. The N2N Challenge was overseen by an Institutional Review Board (IRB) because it involved human subjects. The IRB for this Challenge approved the N2N Challenge with SFE as the source of the latent biometric data. SFE was the only approved source of biometric data listed in the IRB research protocol for the N2N Challenge. As SFE is the only source of the required data and the only source with IRB approval for the N2N Challenge, only SFE is capable of meeting the needs of this requirement.

• SFE is the only entity with access to the physical items that were the source of the digitized latent fingerprints to be analyzed for this requirement. These items are the property of SFE, not NIST (note: the images of these objects are the property of NIST). Physical access allows SFE to re-inspect and re-image physical objects as necessary to ensure that proper correspondence is recorded, leaving little question when determining source finger positions as requested in the statement of work. No other source has access to these materials.

• The required services involve access to biometric data that will be held internal to NIST for biometric technology evaluation testing. The latent fingerprints that need to be correlated to exemplar rolled fingerprints originally came from a photograph of a larger region. This larger region image contains potentially sensitive information, including several other fingerprint images that have not been released to the public and will be used for sequestered biometric testing in other applications in the USG. However, this larger region is important useful information during the correlation process. It is imperative that these larger region images not be spread to outside organizations where it has the potential to compromise the integrity and usefulness as sequestered data in future evaluations. As the certified latent print examiners and certified human subjects protection research experts responsible for collecting the latent biometric data in the first place, SFE is in a unique position in which they already have access to the derived and raw data, and have been successfully trusted in keeping it sequestered. No other source is in possession of this data.

Information for Interested Parties
Interested parties that believe they could satisfy the requirements listed above for NIST may clearly and unambiguously identify their capability to do so in writing by or before the response date for this notice. This notice of intent is not a solicitation.

Any questions regarding this notice must be submitted in writing via email to Ms. Lauren Phelps, Contract Specialist, at Lauren.Phelps@nist.gov. All responses to this notice of intent must be submitted via email to Lauren.Phelps@nist.gov so that they are received no later than May 27, 2019 at 11:00 AM Eastern Time.

Each response should include the following Business Information:

a. Contractor Name, Address,
b. Point of Contact Name, Phone Number, and Email address
c. Contractor DUNS
d. Contractor Business Classification (i.e., small business, 8(a), woman owned, HubZone, veteran owned, etc.) as validated in System for Award Management (SAM). All offerors must register in the SAM located at http://www.sam.gov/portal/SAM/#1
e. Capability Statement

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