A facial recognition system is a computer application for automatically identifying or verifying a person from a digital image or a video frame from a video source. One of the ways to do this is by comparing selected facial features from the image and a facial database. A database management system (DBMS) is computer software designed for the purpose of managing databases. ...

It is typically used in security systems and can be compared to other biometrics such as fingerprint or eye iris recognition systems. At Walt Disney World, biometric measurements are taken from the fingers of guests to ensure that the persons ticket is used by the same person from day to day Biometrics (ancient Greek: bios =life, metron =measure) refers to two very different fields of study and application. ... A macro shot of a palm and the base of several fingers; as seen here, debris can gather between the ridges. ... An iris scan is one of the most currently used methods of biometric authentication. ...

Popular recognition algorithms include eigenface, fisherface, the Hidden Markov model, and the neuronal motivated dynamic link matching. A newly emerging trend, claimed to achieve previously unseen accuracies, is three-dimensional face recognition. Another emerging trend uses the visual details of the skin, as captured in standard digital or scanned images. Tests on the FERET database, the widely used industry benchmark, showed that this approach is substantially more reliable than previous algorithms.^{[citation needed]} Eigenfaces are a set of eigenvectors used in the computer vision problem of human face recognition. ... State transitions in a hidden Markov model (example) x — hidden states y — observable outputs a — transition probabilities b — output probabilities A hidden Markov model (HMM) is a statistical model in which the system being modeled is assumed to be a Markov process with unknown parameters, and the challenge is to... Dynamit Link Matching is a neuronal model for face recognition. ... Three-dimensional face recognition (3D face recognition) is a modality of facial recognition methods in which the three-dimensional geometry of the human face is used. ... The Face Recognition Technology (FERET) program is managed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). ...

Notable users and deployments

The London Borough of Newham, in the UK, has a facial recognition system built into their borough-wide CCTV system. This article is about the London borough. ... This article refers to a surveillance system. ...

The German Federal Police use a facial recognition system to allow voluntary subscribers to pass fully automated border controls at Frankfurt Rhein-Main international airport. Subscribers need to be European Union or Swiss citizens.[1] Griffin Investigations is famous for its recognition system used by casinos to catch card counters and other blacklisted individuals. Badge of the BPOL The Bundespolizei (BPOL) is the (primarily) uniformed federal police force of Germany. ...   (German: , English: American English: ) is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a mid-2007 population of 663,567. ... Griffin Investigations is the most prominent group of private investigators specializing in the gambling industry. ... Card counting is a card game strategy used to determine when a player has a probability advantage. ... Blacklisted redirects here. ...

The Australian Customs Service has an automated border processing system called SmartGate that uses facial recognition. The system compares the face of the individual with the image in the e-passport microchip, certifying that the holder of the passport is the rightful owner. There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ...

Additional uses

In addition to being used for security systems, authorities have found a number of other applications for facial recognition systems.

At Super Bowl XXXV in January 2001, police in Tampa Bay, Florida, used FaceIt to search for potential criminals and terrorists in attendance at the event.^[1] (it found 19 people with pending arrest warrants)^[2] Date January 28, 2001 Stadium Raymond James Stadium City Tampa, Florida MVP Ray Lewis, Linebacker Favorite Ravens by 3 National anthem Backstreet Boys Coin toss Marcus Allen, Ottis Anderson, Tom Flores, Bill Parcells Referee Gerald Austin Halftime show Aerosmith, Britney Spears, Nelly, Mary J. Blige and *NSYNC Attendance 71,921...

In the 2000 presidential election, the Mexican government employed facial recognition software to prevent voter fraud. Some individuals had been registering to vote under several different names, in an attempt to place multiple votes. By comparing new facial images to those already in the voter database, authorities were able to reduce duplicate registrations.^[1] Similar technologies are being used in the United States to prevent people from obtaining fake identification cards and driver’s licenses.^[3][4]

There are also a number of potential uses for facial recognition that are currently being developed. For example, the technology could be used as a security measure at ATM’s; instead of using a bank card or personal identification number, the ATM would capture an image of your face, and compare it to your photo in the bank database to confirm your identity. This same concept could also be applied to computers; by using a webcam to capture a digital image of yourself, your face could replace your password as a means to log-in.^[1]

As part of the investigation of the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann the British police are calling on visitors to the Ocean Club Resort, Praia da Luz in Portugal or the surrounding areas in the two weeks leading up to the child's disappearance on Thursday 3 May 2007 to provide copies of any photographs of people taken during their stay, in an attempt to identify the abductor using a biometric facial recognition application.^[5] Madeleine McCann Madeleine McCann disappeared shortly before her fourth birthday, on the evening of Thursday, 3 May 2007. ... is the 123rd day of the year (124th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ...

Criticisms

Efficacy

Critics of the technology complain that the London Borough of Newham scheme has, as of 2004, never recognised a single criminal, despite several criminals in the system's database living in the Borough and the system having been running for several years. "Not once, as far as the police know, has Newham's automatic facial recognition system spotted a live target."^[6][7] This information seems to conflict with that given by Identix's press release of April 2001, where they claim the system was credited with a 34% reduction in crime - which better explains why the system was then rolled out to Birmingham also. This article is about the London borough. ... 2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

An experiment by the local police department in Tampa, Florida, had similarly disappointing results.^{[citation needed]} Tampa redirects here. ... This article is about the U.S. State of Florida. ...

"Camera technology designed to spot potential terrorists by their facial characteristics at airports failed its first major test at Boston's Logan Airport"^[8] For the Logan airport in Billings, Montana, see Billings Logan International Airport. ...

Privacy concerns

Despite the potential benefits of this technology, many citizens are concerned that their privacy will be invaded. Some fear that it could lead to a “total surveillance society,” with the government and other authorities having the ability to know where you are, and what you are doing, at all times. This is not to be an underestimated concept as history has shown that states have typically abused such access before.^[9]

Early development

Pioneers of Automated Facial Recognition include: Woody Bledsoe, Helen Chan Wolf, and Charles Bisson. Woody Bledsoe Woodrow Wilson Woody Bledsoe (born November 12, 1921 Maysville, Oklahoma. ...

During 1964 and 1965, Bledsoe, along with Helen Chan and Charles Bisson, worked on using the computer to recognize human faces (Bledsoe 1966a, 1966b; Bledsoe and Chan 1965). He was proud of this work, but because the funding was provided by an unnamed intelligence agency that did not allow much publicity, little of the work was published. Given a large database of images (in effect, a book of mug shots) and a photograph, the problem was to select from the database a small set of records such that one of the image records matched the photograph. The success of the method could be measured in terms of the ratio of the answer list to the number of records in the database. Bledsoe (1966a) described the following difficulties:

This project was labeled man-machine because the human extracted the coordinates of a set of features from the photographs, which were then used by the computer for recognition. Using a graphics tablet (GRAFACON or RAND TABLET), the operator would extract the coordinates of features such as the center of pupils, the inside corner of eyes, the outside corner of eyes, point of widows peak, and so on. From these coordinates, a list of 20 distances, such as width of mouth and width of eyes, pupil to pupil, were computed. These operators could process about 40 pictures an hour. When building the database, the name of the person in the photograph was associated with the list of computed distances and stored in the computer. In the recognition phase, the set of distances was compared with the corresponding distance for each photograph, yielding a distance between the photograph and the database record. The closest records are returned. A Wacom Graphire4 graphics tablet. ... Widows peak is the name generally given to a common formation in ones hair, in which the hairline comes together at a sharp downward point toward the face. ...

This brief description is an oversimplification that fails in general because it is unlikely that any two pictures would match in head rotation, lean, tilt, and scale (distance from the camera). Thus, each set of distances is normalized to represent the face in a frontal orientation. To accomplish this normalization, the program first tries to determine the tilt, the lean, and the rotation. Then, using these angles, the computer undoes the effect of these transformations on the computed distances. To compute these angles, the computer must know the three-dimensional geometry of the head. Because the actual heads were unavailable, Bledsoe (1964) used a standard head derived from measurements on seven heads.

After Bledsoe left PRI in 1966, this work was continued at the Stanford Research Institute, primarily by Peter Hart. In experiments performed on a database of over 2000 photographs, the computer consistently outperformed humans when presented with the same recognition tasks (Bledsoe 1968). Peter Hart (1996) enthusiastically recalled the project with the exclamation, "It really worked!" SRI International is one of the worlds largest contract research institutions. ... Peter E. Hart is chairman and president of Ricoh Innovations, which he founded in 1997. ...

By about 1997, the system developed by Christoph von der Malsburg and graduate students of the University of Bochum in Germany and the University of Southern California in the United States outperformed most systems with those of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Maryland rated next. The Bochum system was developed through funding by the United States Army Research Laboratory. The software was sold as ZN-Face and used by customers such as Deutsche Bank and operators of airports and other busy locations. The software was "robust enough to make identifications from less-than-perfect face views. It can also often see through such impediments to identification as mustaches, beards, changed hair styles and glasses—even sunglasses".^[10] This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... The University of Bochum (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) is the first new founded university in Germany after World War II. Having 35,000 students, it is one of the 10 biggest universities in Germany. ... The Trojan Shrine, better known as Tommy Trojan located in the center of University of Southern California campus. ... “MIT” redirects here. ... University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (also known as UM, UMD, or UMCP) is a public coeducational university situated in suburban College Park, Maryland just outside Washington, D.C. The flagship institution of the University System of Maryland, the university is most often referred to... An ARL logo similar to the Great Seal of the United States The Army Research Laboratory (ARL) is the U.S. Armys corporate research laboratory. ... Computer software (or simply software) refers to one or more computer programs and data held in the storage of a computer for some purpose. ... Deutsche Bank AG (IPA: [1]) (ISIN: DE0005140008, NYSE: DB) (English: ) is a bank operating worldwide and employing more than 75,000 people (June, 2007). ...

In about January of 2007, image searches were "based on the text surrounding a photo," for example, if text nearby mentions the image content. Polar Rose technology can guess from a photograph, in about 1.5 seconds, what any individual may look like in three dimensions, and thought they "will ask users to input the names of people they recognize in photos online" to help build a database. At the time, Munjal Shah of Riya thought other images, rather than persons, were the most useful application of search engines to imagery.^[11]

Comparative study

Among the different biometric techniques facial recognition may not be the most reliable and efficient but its great advantage is that it does not require aid from the test subject. Properly designed systems installed in airports, multiplexes, and other public places can detect presence of criminals among the crowd. Other biometrics like fingerprints, iris, and speech recognition cannot perform this kind of mass scanning. However, questions have been raised on the effectiveness of facial recognition software in cases of railway and airport security.

References

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See also

• XID Technologies 3D face synthesis [2]
• Three-dimensional face recognition
• Automatic number plate recognition
• Eigenface
• Face perception
• Mass surveillance
• Pattern recognition, analogy and case-based reasoning

Three-dimensional face recognition (3D face recognition) is a modality of facial recognition methods in which the three-dimensional geometry of the human face is used. ... The system must be able to deal with different styles of licence plates Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR; see also other names below) is a mass surveillance method that uses optical character recognition on images to read the licence plates on vehicles. ... Eigenfaces are a set of eigenvectors used in the computer vision problem of human face recognition. ... Face perception is the process by which the brain and mind understand and interpret the face, particularly the human face. ... A closed-circuit television camera. ... Pattern recognition is a field within the area of machine learning. ... Analogy is both the cognitive process of transferring information from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another particular subject (the target), and a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process. ... Case-based reasoning (CBR), broadly construed, is the process of solving new problems based on the solutions of similar past problems. ...

External links

• Face Detection and Distortion ONLINE
• XID Technologies 3D face synthesis - Enhancing Face Recognition
• Technion 3D face recognition project
• Face recognition and matching site
• Face Recognition Homepage
• Face Detection Homepage
• Introduction from How Stuff Works