A Simultaneous Low Resolution and Off-Pose Angle Face Matching Algorithm as an Investigative Lead Generative Tool for Law Enforcement

This continuation award continues a project that was competitively made in response to a proposal submitted by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) to a National Institute of Justice FY 2013 solicitation, "Applied Technology Research and Development for Criminal Justice Purposes." In this application, CMU proposes to develop a software tool that can be disseminated to law enforcement and other criminal justice agencies that will provide them with the capability to perform facial recognition using low quality, low resolution images, such as those obtained from CCTV surveillance footage. The increasing availability of various imaging devices, such as mobile phones and surveillance cameras, and their increasing capability for acquiring images in unconstrained environments, offers significant potential for criminal investigations. It also poses a significant challenge because the resulting low quality, low-resolution images are hard to match to the images contained in the traditional face databases used by law enforcement agencies, which are relatively clean and often of high resolution. This project is being funded incrementally, with the effort funded in FY14 representing the second phase. nca/ncf