Biometric matching technology

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9292749-B2
Application number	US-201514882552-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 14, 2015
Priority date	Apr 9, 2012
Publication date	Mar 22, 2016
Grant date	Mar 22, 2016

Abstract

Biometric matching technology, in which a watch list is managed, multiple images of a potential suspect are accessed, and parallel pre-processing of the multiple images is controlled. Based on the pre-processing, an image of the potential suspect to use in matching against the watch list is determined and the determined image is used to search sorted biometric data included in the watch list. A subset of persons from the watch list is identified based on the search and parallel analysis of the determined image of the potential suspect against detailed biometric data associated with the subset of persons in the watch list is controlled. Based on the parallel analysis, it is determined whether the potential suspect matches a person in the watch list and a result is outputted based on the determination.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A system comprising:
a database storage;
at least one processor; and
at least one memory coupled to the at least one processor having stored thereon instructions which, when executed by the at least one processor, causes the at least one processor to perform operations comprising:
for each of a plurality of potential reference images:
comparing, for each of a plurality of images of persons on a watch list, the potential reference image with the image; and
determining, for each of the plurality of images of the persons on the watch list, a similarity score that represents a similarity between the potential reference image and the image based on comparing the potential reference image with the image;

determining which of the potential reference images have similarity scores that are most evenly distributed for the plurality of images of the persons on the watch list;
selecting, as a reference image, a single potential reference image that has similarity scores that are most evenly distributed for the plurality of images of the persons on the watch list;
managing, in the database storage, a) biometric data for the persons on the watch list using the similarity scores for the selected reference image and b) associations to additional biometric data for the persons on the watch list;
accessing an image of a potential suspect;
computing a similarity score that represents similarity between the image of the potential suspect and the selected reference image in response to accessing the image of the potential suspect;
searching the watch list using the computed similarity score;
identifying, using a result of the search of the watch list using the computed similarity score, a subset of the persons on the watch list each having a similarity score within a threshold of the computed similarity score for the potential suspect;
determining whether the potential suspect matches a person in the subset of the persons on the watch list; and
outputting a result based on determining whether the potential suspect matches a person in the subset of the persons on the watch list.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein managing a) the biometric data for the persons on the watch list using the similarity scores for the selected reference image and b) associations to additional biometric data for the persons on the watch list comprises maintaining numeric index values for the persons on the watch list using a similarity score for an image of the person and the selected reference image and maintaining blobs of images of the persons on the watch list stored on different partition servers.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein managing a) the biometric data for the persons on the watch list using the similarity scores for the selected reference image and b) associations to additional biometric data for the persons on the watch list comprises:
creating, in a relational database storage, a table for the watch list;
accessing biometric data for a person to be included on the watch list;
determining, for each person on the watch list, an index value from the accessed biometric data for the person and that represents a similarity score for the selected reference image and an image of the person;
storing, for each person on the watch list, the index value with an identifier for the person at an appropriate location in the table;
determining, for each person on the watch list, whether blob data for the accessed biometric data of the person meets a threshold storage size; and
based on determining whether the blob data for the accessed biometric data of the person meets the threshold storage size, performing one of:
for each person on the watch list for which the blob data for the accessed biometric data of the person does not meet the threshold storage size, storing the blob data in the table with an identifier for the person, or
for each person on the watch list for which the blob data for the accessed biometric data of the person meets the threshold storage size, storing the blob data in a non-relational storage and storing a link to the blob data in the table with the identifier.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the operations further comprise:
determining at least one criterion relevant to the image of the potential suspect based on at least one of sensor or camera data;
selecting, as the reference image, the single potential reference image from among multiple reference images based on the at least one criterion; and
accessing the selected reference image, wherein computing the similarity score that represents similarity between the image of the potential suspect and the selected reference image comprises computing the similarity score that represents similarity between the image of the potential suspect and the selected reference image selected from among the multiple reference images.

5. The system of claim 1 , wherein the operations further comprise:
adding one or more additional persons to the watch list;
evaluating a distribution of similarity scores in the watch list;
selecting, as the reference image, the single potential reference image from among multiple reference images based on evaluating the distribution of similarity scores in the watch list; and
accessing the selected reference image, wherein computing the similarity score that represents similarity between the image of the potential suspect and the selected reference image comprises computing the similarity score that represents similarity between the image of the potential suspect and the selected reference image selected from among the multiple reference images.

6. The system of claim 1 , wherein the operations further comprise:
determining at least one criterion relevant to the image of the potential suspect based on at least one of sensor or camera data;
evaluating distribution of similarity scores in the watch list;
selecting, as the reference image, the single potential reference image from among multiple reference images based on the at least one criterion and evaluating the distribution of similarity scores in the watch list; and
accessing the selected reference image, wherein computing the similarity score that represents similarity between the image of the potential suspect and the selected reference image comprises computing the similarity score that represents similarity between the image of the potential suspect and the selected reference image selected from among the multiple reference images.

7. The system of claim 1 , wherein identifying the subset of the persons on the watch list each having a similarity score within a threshold of the computed similarity score for the potential suspect comprises:
determining a quality measure for the image of the potential suspect and the images of the persons on the watch list;
setting a score threshold based on the determined quality measure for the image of the potential suspect and the images of the persons on the watch list; and
identifying a subset of the persons on the watch list each having a similarity score within the set score threshold of the computed similarity score for the potential suspect.

8. The system of claim 1 , wherein identifying the subset of the persons on the watch list each having a similarity score within a threshold of the computed similarity score for the potential suspect comprises:
determining a number of matches within a set of matches representative of the subset of the persons on the watch list;
determining whether the number of matches within the set of matches is within a match threshold; and
based on determining whether the number of matches within the set of matches is within the match threshold, performing one of:
in response to determining that the number of m

Assignees

• Accenture Global Services Ltd

Inventors

• Tiwari Abhinav
• Paul Sanjoy

Classifications

• G06V20/52 Primary

  Surveillance or monitoring of activities, e.g. for recognising suspicious objects (recognising microscopic objects G06V20/69) · CPC title

• G06V40/70

  Multimodal biometrics, e.g. combining information from different biometric modalities · CPC title

• G06F18/22

  Matching criteria, e.g. proximity measures · CPC title

• G06F18/23

  Clustering techniques · CPC title

• G06V10/28

  Quantising the image, e.g. histogram thresholding for discrimination between background and foreground patterns · CPC title