A study and analysis of various techniques to match sketches to Mugshot photos

Identification and apprehension of criminals by matching facial sketches with photographic faces is one of the major law enforcement applications of the modern world. Majority of the crime occur where there will not be any information available regarding the suspect. In such situation, forensic sketch artist who usually deals with the eyewitness of the crime or victim in order to draw the sketch that resembles criminal face according to the verbal description given by the eyewitness. These sketches are termed as `forensic sketches' and can be matched manually against gallery of criminal mug shot photos. By developing an automatic system for matching these sketches to the criminal database would reduce many person-hours. A lot of research is done in this regard. This research paper provides an overview of different forensic sketch matching technique and their analysis.