Face Recognition Gets Lift, U.S. Says
The Department of Commerce has published the Face Recognition Vendor Test 2002, which studied 10 firms’ face recognition work and stated that they had made “significant advances” in this field of technology.
The group that composed the report included several government agencies, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The study, which matched over 121,000 images of more than 37,000 individuals garnered from the State Department’s Mexican non-immigrant visa archive, determined how well the multiple commercially-accessible systems confirmed identity, named unknown faces, and found “watch list” citizens. The systems were able to confirm an individual’s identity 90 percent of the time, with an error rate of 1 percent.
For the first time, the annual study considered demographic elements such as sex and age. Another important factor was whether individuals were being identified inside or outdoors; the study concluded that indoor settings, where lighting is better controlled, offer results that are twice as dependable.
Due to the study’s results, the NIST suggested that face recognition and fingerprinting technologies be combined for better accuracy. The study specifically mentioned three-dimensional morphable modeling, which fits a 3D model to a facial picture taken from the side, and then converts that image into a frontal image. NIST noted that this technology could “significantly improve nonfrontal face recognition.”
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from CNet (03/25/03); Festa, Paul.
