The human face plays an important role in our social interaction, conveying people’s identity. Using the human face as a key to security, biometric face recognition technology has received significant attention in the past several years due to its potential for a wide variety of applications in both law enforcement and non-law enforcement.
As compared with other biometrics systems using fingerprint/palmprint and iris, face recognition has distinct advantages because of its non-contact process. Face images can be captured from a distance without touching the person being identified, and the identification does not require interacting with the person. In addition, face recognition serves the crime deterrent purpose because face images that have been recorded and archived can later help identify a person.
Over the past decades, NEC has concentrated on developing face recognition methods within the framework of biometric security systems and is now applying face recognition technology to other markets. NEC's Face Recognition technology achieved the highest performance evaluation in the Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) 2013 performed by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Moreover, NEC's technology took first place for the third consecutive time following the 2009 Multiple Biometric Grand Challenge (MBGC 2009) and 2010-2011 Multiple Biometrics Evaluation (MBE 2010-2011).
NEC’s face recognition technology can be implemented as a functionally independent application, or seamlessly integrated into new or existing biometric security solutions by system integrators and solution providers.