Current Projects

Matching Sketch to Photos

Examples of forensic sketches (top row) and the corresponding photograph of the later identified subject (bottom row). Images used with permission from [L. Gibson, Forensic Art Essentials. Elsevier, 2008].

It is vital for law enforcement agencies to have the capability to identify unknown criminals using any various forms of available information. Forensic sciences often focus on this goal: given a latent fingerprint, DNA sample, or digital image of a suspect, accurately determine their identity. A profound improvement on this identification task has been observed through the development and progression of biometric technologies. Given (i) the large collection face image databases (e.g. mug shot, driver license, passport), and (ii) many opportunities to acquire face images from both the ubiquity of cameras and generation of forensic sketches, increasing the accuracy of face identification technology is of significant benefit to the criminal justice community.

Forensic sketches are drawn by a police artist based on a verbal description of the appearance of a subject provided by a witness or the victim. Commercial-of-the-shelf (COTS) face recognition systems (FRS) are not designed to match forensic sketches to photograph images, which limits the paradigm for utilizing forensic sketches to dissemination of the composite to media outlets and law enforcement agencies with the goal of someone recognizing the individual depicted in the image. Considering the (i) time spent generating a single forensic sketch, (ii) economic impact of disseminating the sketch to media outlets and law enforcement agencies, and (iii) egregious nature of crimes that are typically committed by culprits depicted in the composites (e.g. murder, sexual assault, armed robbery), progress in the ability to automatically match these sketches to the extensive face databases available is paramount. The goal of this research is to develop matching system specially designed to match forensic sketches to photograph databases.

Matching with the FaceSketchID System

H. Han, B. Klare, K. Bonnen, and A. K. Jain, "Matching Composite Sketches to Face Photos: A Component-Based Approach", IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 2012 (To Appear).

A. K. Jain, and B. Klare, "Matching Forensic Sketches and Mug Shots to Apprehend Criminals", IEEE Computer, Vol.44, No. 5, pp. 94-96, May 2011.

B. Klare, Z. Li, and A. K. Jain, "Matching Forensic Sketches to Mugshot Photos", IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Vol. 33, No. 3, pp. 639-646, March, 2011.

B. Klare and A. K. Jain, "Sketch to Photo Matching: A Feature-based Approach",Proc of SPIE, Biometric Technology for Human Identification VII, April 2010.