History Of Facial Recognition Technology And DNA Face Matching
Founders and inventors of automated face recognition include Helen Chan Wolf, Woody Bledsoe and Charles Bisson and Lawrence Reese.
During the early 1960’s, Bledsoe, along with Helen Chan and Charles Bisson, worked on using the computer to recognize human faces. Early on major financial philanthropist funded research and therefore didn’t publish a lot of research publicly. Based on small amounts of leaked information the public was educated that Bledsoe’s studies involved the manual marketing of a number of landmarks on the face such has the mouth, center of both eyes, etc. These landmarks were mathematically rotated by computer to compensate for different poses someone may have in the image. The distances between landmarks were automatically computed and compared between images to verify identity.
By having a larger database of photos, like from mug shots or pictures from a busy airport, the problem was to select from the database a small number of records and try to match with the photo in question. The success of the method could be measured in terms of the ratio of the answer list to the number of records in the database. Bledsoe had several challenges with this method. He made the following statement in 1966:
“This recognition problem is made difficult by the great variability in head rotation and tilt, lighting intensity and angle, facial expression, aging, etc. Some other attempts at face recognition by machine have allowed for little or no variability in these quantities. Yet the method of correlation (or pattern matching) of unprocessed optical data, which is often used by some researchers, is certain to fail in cases where the variability is great. In particular, the correlation is very low between two pictures of the same person with two different head rotations.”— Woody Bledsoe, 1966
So many things have advanced with this topic since 1966. Throughout the 21 century Face IT DNA Technology LLC, a scientific face recognition company at the Direction of Lawrence Reese, has been able to dive in to further studies of human hereditary genetics and face detection. DNA Face Matching involves biometric landmarking and hereditary characteristics that are passed from generation to generation. Face IT DNA Technology LLC initially focused on the paternal line of genetic comparisons. Our most recent research allows us to depict extended studies such as comparing an aunt or uncles photo to a child, or comparing two siblings, cousins or even grandparents. As you can see facial recognition is nothing new but is becoming a larger part of our everyday lives. Cell phones, offices security, home security, background checks, fingerprint biometrics and now DNA Paternity, DNA Ancestry Testing and DNA Relationship Testing.
As frequently quoted by Face IT DNA Technology’s Chief Executive Officer and Director, Lawrence Reese: “There is so much we can learn from a person’s face and physical hereditary characteristics”.