Animetrics webinar showcases new investigative facial recognition solution for law enforcement

Animetrics Inc. held its anticipated webinar showcasing its new Forensica GPS facial recognition system today.

This new system is a comparative face recognition system with many obvious applications for law enforcement. ForensicaGPS has the ability to transform obscured or angular 2D images, and can create three-dimensional visualization of the subject’s face for ID verification and comparison.

According to Animetrics president and CEO, Paul Schuepp, the Pennsylvania Justice Network has been using the ForensicaGPS system with great success, as have many agencies in the Middle East.

This tool features embedded GPS – a built in global position system of the face – correlating all 2D 9x,y) positions to their corresponding #D (x,y,z) positions, hence the name ForensicaGPS.

In the company’s webinar, a few impressive examples were used to showcase the ForensicaGPS’s capabilities and flow. First was a comparison of Casey Anthony’s face. One image was an image from the news, clearly showing Anthony in court. The second image was from paparazzi group TMZ and was an angular image of a woman they believed to be Anthony, disguising her appearance in public with a new hairstyle, a baseball cap and think-framed glasses. In the demonstration, the two images were placed side-by-side and 3D visualizations were made for each. The two images were superimposed together and the process for comparison was shown.

The software was able to identify the similarities between the two faces and then allowed for closer inspection. First eye shape was compared, then the nose and mouth, and then some identifying moles on her face, barely noticeable in the construed image.

Many of the examples used to explain this facial recognition technology were from surveillance activities, but ironically didn’t show the faces of the people in these images, as they are involved in open investigations.
The real benefit of this system is the 3D renderings and subsequent pose correction, creating a frontal image of a person’s face. When working with only a construed 2D image it is near-impossible to effectively process that image through facial recognition systems. According to the company, this new system is even able to envision a suspect’s face wearing sunglasses, by identifying eye position before comparing to another existing image.

A ForensicaGPS demo is available on the company’s website.

Article Topics

3D  |  Animetrics  |  biometrics  |  criminal ID  |  facial recognition  |  identification  |  law enforcement  |  software  |  verification