Using biometric facial recognition for verification and identification

Presented is a summary of the results from two research projects that were carried out on a cooperative basis between the Bundeskriminalamt (Federal Criminal Police Office) and the Bundesamt fur Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (Federal Office for Security in Information Technology). To sum up, the result of the BioP I (identification of persons by using biometric facial recognition systems) project can be stated as follows: Facial recognition is basically suitable for use with identification documents and, if certain criteria are met, performance can even be very good. Reservations must be made with regard to fake resistance and ageing effects. The results obtained from the BioP I project are being verified during the BioP II project on the basis of a larger test group and being compared with the biometric methods of iris and fingerprint recognition. BioP II, the follow-up project of BioP I, compares the methods of facial recognition, fingerprint recognition and iris recognition. Information about the performance of the respective systems is expected to result from a large-scale field test with more than 2000 participants.