Move over DNA evidence: Researchers cull images reflected in people’s eyes with new forensics technique

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    Researchers cull images reflected in people’s eyes with new forensics technique

“I get lost in your eyes,” you say? Researchers are working on ways to find you and save the resulting image for posterity – or for a criminal investigation.

Even though enhancements of the reflected images appear blurry, they carry enough detail to allow others to identify the people reflected in the subject’s eyes.

Several research teams are pursuing the approach, known as corneal imaging, with a range of applications in mind. Criminal forensics and surveillance, including the potential to reconstruct the immediate environment that the subject of the photo occupies, are some examples. Others include advanced computer graphics, facial and iris identification, and robotics, researchers say.

Much of this work involves close-ups of the eye, plus sophisticated computer processing, to yield sharp reflected images.

But Rob Jenkins, with the University of York in Britain, and collaborator Christie Kerr, at the University of Glasgow, have shown that useful images for identifying persons of interest in a crime don’t have to be razor sharp, given humans’ remarkable ability at pattern recognition. Faces can be reconstructed from images taken with commercial digital cameras and enhanced with off-the-shelf image-processing software.

Moreover, where other groups have also worked to retrieve an individual facial image or even full-length image reflected from a cornea, these results are the first to demonstrate that eye reflections can be used to identify otherwise hidden bystanders, says Dr. Jenkins, a cognitive scientist, in an e-mail.

“You could think of it as a foray into extreme facial recognition. Yes, the camera can resolve the face, and yes, the brain can identify it,” he writes, “but both systems are pushed to their limits, and neither could perform the feat alone.”….more here

Source: www.rawstory.com