NEC NeoFace Facial Recognition Software solution identifies Boston Marathon bombing suspect
NEC today announced its NeoFace Facial Recognition Software solution achieved high accuracy in an independent study conducted by Michigan State University (MSU) and was able to identify a suspect from the recent Boston Marathon Bombing in the same study that simulated the post-bombing forensic work. In the MSU simulation, researchers used actual law-enforcement video from the bombing and searched it against a background database of 1 million law enforcement booking images. They found that the NEC NeoFace product produced a “rank one” identification (a match) of suspect number two.
The MSU study’s focus was to examine the reliability of automated facial recognition (AFR) software to assist law enforcement in identifying suspects in a simulation of the forensic work done after the Boston Bombings. Media reports of the post-Boston Bombing investigation created a common perception that facial recognition technology is not always reliable because it apparently was not a factor in identifying the suspects. The published results of the MSU study challenge this perception. The MSU study found that the NEC NeoFace solution consistently registered highly accurate facial matching scores in the study’s simulation.
The MSU technical paper on evaluating automatic facial recognition technology :-