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Facial Recognition Systems: New Accuracy Study

By Jeralyn, Section Crime Policy
Posted on Fri Mar 21, 2003 at 01:10:37 PM EST
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The National Institute of Standards has just completed a study for the Government on the accuracy of facial recognition systems. Here are the major findings:

  • The systems recognize men more easily than women.
  • Younger people are harder to recognize than older people.
  • Recognition from video imagery is not much better than from still images.
  • Even topflight software is not sensitive to typical indoor lighting changes.
  • The technology has improved substantially over the past two years. How accurate are the systems?
    The three top-rated systems verified identities correctly 87 percent to 90 percent of the time with a false-alarm rate of 1 percent. When NIST specified a false-alarm rate of 0.1 percent, the success rate dropped to between 79 percent and 82 percent. When checking facial images against a watch list of 25 images at a false-alarm rate of 1 percent, the top three systems were accurate about 80 percent of the time. The success rate fell to below 60 percent when NIST expanded the watch list to 3,000 images at the same false-alarm rate.
    [link via PatriotWatch]

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