FB pixel

NIST workshop discusses new approaches to improving tattoo recognition

Categories Biometrics News  |  Law Enforcement
 

An international group of experts from industry, academia and government participated in National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Tattoo Recognition Technology Challenge Workshop in which it discussed challenges and potential ways of automating tattoo recognition to help law enforcement identify criminals and victims.

The move comes a few months after the National Institute of Standards and Technology invited all interested commercial and academic organizations to participate in advancing research and development of automated image-based tattoo matching technology.

After being initially presented with the results of a preliminary trial of existing tattoo recognition software, industry and academia were asked by the FBI Biometric Center of Excellence (BCOE) to take initial steps into automated image-based tattoo matching technology.

The current method of cataloging tattoo images for the purpose of sharing among various law enforcement agencies is completely reliant on a keyword based process.

However, multiple keywords must be used in a database to keep up with the increasing selection of tattoo designs requires multiple keywords, which can result in the same tattoo being given different labels depending on the examiner.

All of the participating organizations used the same BCOE-provided dataset of thousands of images from government databases.

NIST offered participants five use cases and asked them to report their performance on finding
visually similar or related tattoos from different subjects, different instances of the same tattoo image from the same subject over time, a small region of interest that is contained in a larger image, visually similar or related tattoos using different types of images, and whether an image contains a tattoo or not.

“The state-of-the-art algorithms fared quite well in detecting tattoos, finding different instances of the same tattoo from the same subject over time, and finding a small part of a tattoo within a larger tattoo,” said NIST computer scientist Mei Ngan, who organized the challenge.

Meanwhile, Ngan discovered that were two areas that could use further research, including detecting visually similar tattoos on different people and recognizing a tattoo image from a sketch or sources other than a photo.

“Improving the quality of tattoo images during collection is another area that may also improve recognition accuracy,” said Ngan.

There are several organizations that participated in the challenge including Compass Technical Consulting, LLC., the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, MITRE, MorphoTrak and Purdue University.

Workshop participants also explored the potential use of image-based tattoo matching in operations, identified notable discrepancies and the need to improve tattoo recognition, as well as the next steps NIST might take in this area.

Article Topics

 |   |   |   |   |   | 

Latest Biometrics News

 

Biometrics and injection detection for deepfake defense a rising priority

Biometrics integrations with injection attack detection to defend the latest front in the global battle against fraud, deepfakes, is the…

 

Biometric Update Podcast looks at the road to a global standard for age assurance

Episode 2 of the Biometric Update Podcast is a dispatch from the 2025 Global Age Assurance Standards Summit, held from…

 

WEF launches new DPI initiative focused on emerging tech, including biometrics

Global Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) initiatives are lagging behind emerging technologies such as AI, which could lead to inefficiencies, bottlenecks…

 

Odds are good for biometrics firms in the global gambling sector

Gambling has always been a vice associated with certain kinds of criminal activity, but the development of the online gambling…

 

New Zealand issues tender for digital ID services accreditation infrastructure

New Zealand’s accredited digital identity services regulator, the Trust Framework Authority (TFA), has published a request for information (RFI) for…

 

Pindrop surpasses $100M in annual recurring revenue, kicks off BU podcast

A release from Atlanta-based voice biometrics firm Pindrop celebrates a milestone: the firm has surpassed US$100 million in Annual Recurring…

Comments

6 Replies to “NIST workshop discusses new approaches to improving tattoo recognition”

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Market Analysis

Most Viewed This Week

Featured Company

Biometrics Insight, Opinion

Digital ID In-Depth

Biometrics White Papers

Biometrics Events