Unique Approach to Facial Surveillance Credited With 90 Percent Accuracy in Field Tests
San Francisco, CA--(Marketwire) - 3VR Security, Inc., the searchable surveillance leader, today announced the recently published results of a rigorous study of facial recognition technologies conducted by the Korean National Police Agency (NPA). The report summarizes two years of rigorous testing across a broad spectrum of competing solutions, ultimately confirming the 3VR platform as the most comprehensive, accurate and fastest-performing surveillance network solution on the market today.
The NPA requested that SKNetworks, one of Korea’s largest security companies, aid them in the testing of various biometric and facial recognition technologies.
“Before testing 3VR, we were unable to get any results that would be satisfactory to the Korean government,” said Sung-Ho Kong, SKNetworks. “We needed to achieve accuracy of around 90 percent with very low false positives for the test to be considered a success, and only 3VR was able to achieve these results consistently.”
“In 2008, we performed a live, uncontrolled test of 3VR’s facial recognition technology in Seoul subway stations, where the solution was an impressive 85-92 percent accurate, depending on conditions,” said Kong. “No other solution approached this level of accuracy, vastly improving our ability to track, find and thwart crime in subways and other highly populated areas, which had previously proven extremely difficult to monitor.”
Over the past several years, high-profile kidnappings have left many South Korean citizens extremely concerned for their safety. In one case, the President of Korea took the extreme step of tasking thousands of his country’s police to review millions of hours of government surveillance video in the hopes of finding clues surrounding a child’s recent disappearance. However, without adequate technology to help the police sort through the massive volumes of video surveillance data, the effort was unsuccessful, spurring the government’s search for a surveillance solution with comprehensive search capabilities.
“In order to deploy the best facial surveillance and recognition infrastructure throughout Korea, it is required to build real-time criminal surveillance & investigation centers and develop various core technologies, such as a central watch list database system and video compensation technology,” said Jong-Moon Byun, NPA. “Our project proved that it is technically possible to compare and match facial images extracted from real-time CCTV streaming against watch list databases, and we feel very confident that we will be able to adopt this new facial technology in real-world NPA surveillance and criminal investigation work.”
“Subways and other public, highly-trafficked areas present numerous challenges in terms of facial recognition and tracking,” said Mr. Byun. “After our government project, we verified that it is really feasible to track and recognize faces in fast-moving crowds of thousands with less than ideal circumstances, like poor lighting and limited photo angles. So, if we integrate this new technology in the future with CCTV surveillance centers, which are run by municipal governments, it would be possible to achieve highly efficient surveillance infrastructure with less cost.”
3VR’s facial recognition technology was specifically designed to address the inherent challenges of video-based biometrics, and the company has filed over a dozen patents regarding their unique approaches to these problems. Previous technologies, designed primarily for the analysis of passport-style photographs, have generally failed in the context of video, where pose, lighting, motion and other factors are “uncontrolled” and can vary widely from face-to-face.
“This study demonstrates the breakthrough power of 3VR’s patented facial surveillance technology,” said Tim Frederick, director of engineering at 3VR. “Unlike other attempts at high-volume face surveillance, which re-purposed still-image face recognition algorithms, the South Korean study benefited from 3VR’s end-to-end video analysis system, specifically designed for this type of demanding video application.”
About 3VR
3VR Security, Inc., the searchable surveillance leader, provides the first intelligent video management system powered by a search engine with integrated video analytics. 3VR systems lower physical and operational costs while dramatically improving the effectiveness and efficiency of investigations for fraud, theft, and other crimes. Based in San Francisco, CA, the company is privately held with funding from Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Buyers, VantagePoint Ventures, In-Q-Tel, and DAG Ventures. 3VR is the three-time winner of the SIA best new video product, was named security product of the year from Frost & Sullivan 2006 and 2007 among other awards. For more information please visit www.3vr.com.