It was first established in 1993 under a collaborative effort between Harry Wechsler at George Mason University and Jonathon Phillips at the Army Research Laboratory in Adelphi, Maryland.
The use of a common database also allowed one to compare the effectiveness of different approaches in methodology and gauge their strengths and weaknesses.
In 2003, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) released a high-resolution, 24-bit color version of these images.
The dataset tested includes 2,413 still facial images, representing 856 individuals.
The FERET database has been used by more than 460 research groups and is managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).