Software that artificially “ages” a person’s face using a range of parameters could help find many missing persons, hope the researchers behind it.
The software tries to work out how a face may change by factoring in their personal history, family traits and population trends. Artificial aging software exists already, but this can provide only apply rough physical changes.
Agencies involved in tracing missing persons routinely try to simulate ageing to predict the way a person will look many years after they have disappeared. But they must use artists who are given the most recent images of a person as well as pictures of that person’s family.
This is time consuming and expensive, says forensic imaging specialist Chris Solomon at Kent University in the UK: “It can take around 20 to 40 hours per face, which means that generally it is not possible to do as many as would be ideal.”
So Solomon and colleagues Catherine Scandrett and Stuart Gibson have developed software that simulates the aging process automatically. It takes into account the way a person has changed in the past, where known, and examines the ageing of other family members as well as the wider population.
Face database
The system first converts a face into a set of numbers based on the location and size of each feature. It then uses a database of previously entered faces to calculate the transformations that need to be made. This database includes previous images of the person in question as well as photographs of their family members and other individuals…
Just imagine what you can do with this technology! We can find out what a missing child might look like years later, in hope of finding them. This could reunite family’s who were separated from their children when their children were young.
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