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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/usnistgov/NFIQ2/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

Unless you are actively developing code for NFIQ 2, we highly suggest you download pre-built binaries from GitHub Releases instead of attempting to compile.

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Source Code

You must recursively clone the repository to retrieve git submodules. Do not use the GitHub ZIP file download. 
git clone --recursive https://github.com/usnistgov/NFIQ2.git
cd NFIQ2
If you’ve already cloned the repository without the --recursive flag, initialize submodules with: 
git submodule update --init --recursive

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Core Dependencies

The NFIQ 2 library requires the following dependencies, included as git submodules:

OpenCV

Computer vision library for image processingLicense: Apache 2.0Version: OpenCV 4 (latest release)

FingerJetFX OSE

Minutiae extraction engineLicense: LGPLv3Repository: FingerJetFXOSE

digestpp

C++ header-only message digest libraryLicense: Public DomainRepository: kerukuro/digestpp
Using a different version of OpenCV may result in unstable NFIQ 2 scores and is not supported. NIST relies on the latest release of OpenCV 4 for consistency and accuracy.

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CLI-Specific Dependencies

If building the standalone command-line executable, additional dependencies are required:

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libbiomeval

The Biometric Evaluation Framework handles fingerprint image I/O and encoding.
  • License: Public Domain
  • Additional dependencies required (see below)

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NFIR

The NIST Fingerprint Image Resampler provides image resampling capabilities.
  • License: Public Domain
  • Requires: OpenCV (already required by NFIQ 2)

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System Packages

The libbiomeval dependency requires system-level packages to be installed: 
sudo apt-get install \
  build-essential \
  cmake \
  libdb++-dev \
  libhwloc-dev \
  libjbig-dev \
  libjpeg-dev \
  libopenjp2-7-dev \
  liblzma-dev \
  libpng-dev \
  libsqlite3-dev \
  libssl-dev \
  libtiff-dev \
  libzstd-dev \
  zlib1g-dev

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Build Tools

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Required

  • CMake 3.3 or later
  • C++11-compatible compiler:
    • GCC 4.8+
    • Clang 3.3+
    • MSVC 2015+
    • Apple Clang (Xcode 10+)

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Optional

  • pandoc - For generating formatted documentation in packages

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Next Steps

Build Library

Build the NFIQ 2 library only

Build CLI

Build the library and command-line interface

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