Fergie's Tech Blog

Surveillance Tech: Computerized Facial Recognition is Improving

Wilson P. Dizard III writes on GCN.com:

Technology for computerized facial recognition is ten times more accurate now than it was four years ago, and the best of the systems outperform humans, the National Institute of Standards said.

The federal government has pressed the private sector to improve facial and iris recognition technology dramatically so as to pave the way for improved biometric systems, and NIST has overseen the process in tests called the Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) 2006 and the Iris Challenge Evaluation (ICE) 2006.

The facial-recognition test has compared vendor systems on in their ability to recognize high-resolution still images and three-dimensional facial images, under both controlled and uncontrolled illumination. The ICE 2006 test reported iris recognition performance from left and right irises. The study compared the facial recognition test results with an earlier evaluation called the FRVT 2002. ICE 2006 reported iris recognition performance from left and right irises.

According to a NIST report issued in late March, the facial recognition systems it tested in the FRVT 2006 trials showed an “order of magnitude,” or tenfold, improvement over comparable tests conducted four years ago.

posted by Fergie @ 4/03/2007 01:29:00 PM