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 using three-dimensional face recognition and using the visual details of the skin, as captured in standard digital or scanned images. It is typically used in security systems and can be compared to other biometrics such as fingerprint or eye iris recognition systems.

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 particular subjects among the crowd. Other biometrics like fingerprints, iris, and speech recognition cannot perform this kind of mass scanning.