Business Joins Academia For Large-Scale Face-Search To Fight Crime, Terrorism

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

Surveillance cameras are omnipresent on modern life. In a famous example, London, England has one camera for every fourteen residents. The big problem is not gathering the data, but processing it in an efficient, effective, and timely manner. What is needed is the ability to quickly and accurately analyse and search the data in order to identify and apprehend terrorist and criminal suspects. To this end, Michigan State University (MSU) has licensed its automatic, large-scale face-search system to NEC Corp.

Biometrics expert Anil Jain, MSU Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Dayong Wang postdoctoral fellow at MSU, and Charles Otto, an MSU PhD student have developed the automatic, large-scale face-search system. The system can use a photo from a surveillance camera to search a database of face images for the closest match and quickly identify a suspect.

“The strength of this face-search system is that it can process and search so-called ‘faces in the wild’ — unconstrained images,” Jain said. “Unconstrained images are those captured in everyday life that have varied poses, lighting and backgrounds that can make facial recognition challenging. When integrated with a commercial algorithm like NEC Neoface, we achieve even greater accuracy in matching unconstrained face images.”

NEC Corp of America is one of the largest providers of biometric technology. By partnering with NEC, the MSU team intends to make its system ready to be deployed and used in real-world conditions.

“NEC is committed to maintain its leadership position in facial recognition solutions,” said Raffie Beroukhim, vice president, NEC Corp of America’s Biometrics Solutions Division. “In addition to our own continued research, partnerships with academia, in particular Michigan State University, is an important aspect of this commitment. We look forward to the fusion of MSU large-scale face-search algorithm with our industry-leading Neoface facial algorithms to offer more compelling solutions to address ever-increasing security threats and enhance public and national security.”