How are suspects identified and located when the only lead in the investigation is an eyewitness’ memory of events? In these situations Police will often create a pictorial likeness of the suspect called a Facial Composite (a.k.a. E-FIT, PhotoFIT or Identikit). Previously, composite images have been created from a verbal description of the suspect, provided by a witness. This is a lengthy process that can be prone to misinterpretation which adversely affects accuracy and therefore also diminishes the chance of locating the suspect. Wouldn’t it be great if we could overcome these issues by simply reading the witness’ mind? That’s what SPS spin-out company Visionmetric ltd aim to achieve with their EEG-FIT research and development project.

The EEG-FIT project aims to exploit the enhanced (so-called Fringe P3) EEG brain wave response to facial images that bear resemblance to a criminal suspect and, in this way, generate facial composite images more accurately and rapidly.

Key people: Dr Chris Solomon, Dr Stuart Gibson & Prof Howard Bowman.

Kent Researchers, Bai & Gibson, develop AI based Clinical Support Software to aid Ophthalmologists.

Senior lecturer Dr Stuart Gibson said: “AI has completely revolutionised the way we approach computer vision research. Our team has considerable experience in this area, having previously developed AI for facial identification, detection of objects concealed in postal items and the identification of unknown substances.”

“The primary motivation for our work is to have a positive impact on society. Our project with Nishal Patel and the Trust has the potential to significantly improve patient care.”

Fangliang Bai (SPS Postgrad) delivers review presentation on  Clinical Support Systems underpinned by AI. 7th November 2019, Biomedical Sciences Students Day at East Kent Urology, Kent and Canterbury Hospital.

Love it or loath it, artificial intelligence has revolutionised computer vision and continues to generate great interest in many areas of science. In our 2017 Analyst paper we show that a 1D convolutional neural network is an effective tool for the classification of unknown substances.  Our method, developed for vibrational spectroscopy,  removes the necessity for complicated signal preprocessing  and therefore allows rapid and automated identification of substances. We are currently working with industry to develop this technology further for application in large scale chemical manufacturing.

Improving cyber security using realistic synthetic face generation

The grant application outlines a novel programme of research that questions the uniqueness of facial identity and investigates the use of computer generated face imagery in the area of cyber security. The popularity of the human face as a biometric remains strong despite the introduction of many competing modalities. People are accustomed to being identified by their facial appearance whereas other biometrics such as fingerprints and iris recognition feel more invasive. A programme of research that investigates the concept of identity that is highly relevant to cyber security is proposed. In addition we will develop a novel cyber security application based on facial identity and evaluate its practical security level.

Work of this nature has relevance beyond the scope of the project. For example, border control officers routinely verify a person’s identity using passport photos but what is the fundamental limit on the ability to achieve this task reliably?

Principal Investigator Stuart Gibson (SPS), Co-Investigators: Julio Hernandez-Castro (School of Computing) & Chris Solomon (SPS).

The award coincides with Kent’s recent success in securing an Excellence in Cyber Security Research award, supported by GCHQ and EPSRC.

People encounter more faces than ever in a modern world. This symposium investigates the boundaries of face recognition, including research on how many faces can be perceived at a time, imaging data on developmental face blindness, the existence of human face experts, and technology to increase face recognition performance.

 

Face-Specific Capacity limits
Volker Thoma
University of East London, United Kingdom

The 2015 SEPnet Winter School for Physics postgraduate students took place at the Culham Science Centre (home to JET) in the week beginning 2nd February 2015. There was an unexpected flurry of snow on the Monday evening.

Back by popular demand, the Patterns and Security workshop was delivered by Tony Mansfield (Industrial Speaker, NPL) and Stuart Gibson (Academic Lead, University of Kent).   Presentations on the cutting edge biometric technology and an introduction to pattern recognition, were followed by a hands on activity in which students performed a hierarchical clustering of objects.

Check out my article on The Conversation http://theconversation.com/forging-a-photo-is-easy-but-how-do-you-spot-a-fake-34436
Thanks to Michael Parker (TheConversation) for inviting me to submit and editing the article.

Articles

Li, Y., Liu, Y., Weng, D., & Zhang, Y. (2011, December). Simulation of depth from coded aperture cameras with Zemax. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Virtual Reality Continuum and Its Applications in Industry (pp. 463-466). ACM.

Levin, A., Fergus, R., Durand, F., & Freeman, W. T. (2007, August). Image and depth from a conventional camera with a coded aperture. In ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG) (Vol. 26, No. 3, p. 70). ACM.

Videos

Software

Cloud based Latex editors
https://www.sharelatex.com/   [Good]
https://code.google.com/p/latex-lab/    [Still under development]

Miktex (latex install)
http://miktex.org/

Texniccenter (Windows latex editor)
http://www.texniccenter.org/

Matlab code for deconvolution using image priors (Levin et al.)
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/graphics/CodedAperture/DeconvolutionCode.html

Vector drawing package
http://www.serif.com/drawplus/

The first SEPnet Summer School for Physics graduates in the SEPnet consortium took place in the week beginning 9th June 2014 at the National Physics Laboratory, London. Students attended a broad range of workshops to highlight areas of employment and research that are applicable to scientists holding a PhD in Physics.

The Patterns and Security workshop was delivered by Tony Mansfield (Industrial Speaker, NPL) and Stuart Gibson (Academic Lead, University of Kent).   Presentations on the cutting edge biometric technology and an introduction to pattern recognition, were followed by a hands on activity in which students performed a hierarchical clustering of objects.

Patterns and Security workshop activity: students with their hierarchical clustering of fruit and associated dendrogram.

Below is Wordle reflecting the students’ experiences of the summer school.