Matching Forensic Sketches to Large Face Image Databases

This award was competitively made under the FY2011 NIJ "Sensor, Surveillance, and Biometric Technologies for Criminal Justice Applications" solicitation. This project is for research to develop a software tool to match forensic sketches to facial images contained in law enforcement databases such as the photographs taken at booking. The proposed FY 2013 supplement is to enable refinement of the grantee-developed 'Face Sketch ID' software tool to incorporate lessons learned during Beta testing and to enable its further demonstration. Facial sketches are widely used by law enforcement agencies to assist in the identification and apprehension of suspects involved in criminal activities. In the first two years of this project, the applicant developed the FaceSketchID system, which can automatically match facial sketches to mugshots with state-of-the-art accuracy. The algorithm used by the FaceSketchID system for matching has been improved throughout the duration of the initial award and the awardee anticipates continuing to improve performance by: (i) incorporating a facial component representation scheme, (ii) integrating better training methods, (iii) changing the similarity measures, (iv) tuning algorithmic parameters, and (v) acquiring additional training data. With the feedback from users, they will improve the user interface of the FaceSketchID system in addition to increasing its usability by reducing the face/sketch template size and increasing matching speed. Performance of the technology can be measured by the facial recognition capability of the software tool against forensic sketches and composite facial renderings. Deliverables include the software tool and reporting on the above project. nca/ncf