VisionSphere's Facial Recognition
Technology Helps Catch Criminals
Law & Order is severely hampered when
it comes to sharing mug shots of criminals. Today, law enforcement in
one town hardly benefits when another city has a felon’s photo on
file. Police still use printed books of mug shots; even when their own
records are computerized. They have to use text-based searches in
their mug shot database, because they cannot easily access the arrest
photos on file at another city.
VisionSphere
Technologies is testing the integration of its facial recognition
program with standard databases.” For years, we’ve noted law
enforcement’s need for both facial recognition technology -- of which
there are now quite a few providers -- and distributed cross-database
communications capabilities -- for which VisionSphere has unique,
patent-pending methods,” explained VisionSphere’s CEO Sal Khan.
The company’s facial recognition
software takes a mug shot database and
converts it to its “facial biometric” template -- a way of breaking
down a portrait into regions that are more correctly compared and
matched. That’s a one-time process, after which one can quickly find a
face in a converted database. Then the VSIdent system searches
throughout a distributed network, comparing a photo of the person
sought with thousands of mug shots.
In the “Project BlueBear” pilot
demonstration at the Canadian Police Research Centre, the VSIdent
system searched 11,000 mug shots in the databases of four cities. It
found the correct image, and also found matches from an image
extracted from a video surveillance tape and a composite image.
VisionShpere performed a demonstration for the California Department
of Justice, successfully found the matching face in 67,000 images.
Khan says the VSIdent system can
deploy on existing IT infrastructure and the Internet. “It doesn't
require new capital investments, major upgrades, or the creation of a
private network.”
Facial recognition in general may
become the leading biometric as it’s “accurate, fast, and
non-invasive.” Projections show that the overall biometric market will
reach $2.3 billion by 2004. Soon this infoimaging technology may well
be used to visually communicate between thousands of police forces
across the continent.
Quote:
“We are expanding our pilot project to
four locations. Once it is proven, it will become a commercial
product. There are 19,000 police departments in the US, and 1,000 in
Canada that can benefit from this technology to take a bite out of
crime.” Sal Khan , CEO, VisionSphere
