ISO/IEC 19794-3:2006, the finger pattern spectral data interchange format, specifies requirements for the representation of local or global spectral data derived from a fingerprint image. The format is designed to provide flexibility in the choice of spectral representation in that spectral components may be based on quantized co-sinusoidal triplets, Discrete Fourier Transformations or Gabor filters. The format also allows for a variable number of spectral components to be retained, which enables data representations in a form that is more compact than storage of the entire fingerprint image. ISO/IEC 19794-3:2006 provides example data records for each of the spectral representations.