Statistically rigorous age progression for the identification of missing persons

参与寻找失踪者的人必须依靠他们失踪前拍摄的照片。对于失踪的成年人来说，这不是一个太大的问题，因为他们的外表不会发生根本的变化。然而，孩子们可能已经变得面目全非了。该项目的目的是开发一种“老化”面部图像的方法，以提供失踪儿童现在的真实印象。如果成功，该系统将大大促进那些寻找失踪儿童的工作：它将以目前成本的一小部分快速而简单地提供准确的图像。该项目将开发算法，或逐步解决问题的程序，可用于面部图像的老化。这些研究将基于邓迪大学对儿童在发育的两个关键阶段的面部变化的研究，以及肯特大学现有的面部数据档案。该项目将受益于国家失踪人员帮助热线（NMPH）和VisionMetric公司的密切互动和指导，VisionMetric公司在开发法医成像应用方面拥有丰富的商业经验。该项目的最终成果将是一个可以在标准硬件和互联网上使用的软件系统。然而，为了达到这一阶段，将有一系列的项目阶段：编译和注释跨越两个主要发展阶段的儿童面部照片数据库（在邓迪）开发面部外观的综合统计模型（在肯特）开发针对个人的年龄转换技术（在邓迪和肯特）开发这些技术使其快速和用户友好；软件系统的实际实施（在肯特郡，涉及VisionMetric， NMPH和Metropolitan Police）

People involved in trying to find missing persons have to depend upon images of them taken before they disappeared. For missing adults, this is not too great a problem, as their appearance will not have changed radically. However, children may have changed out of all recognition. The aim of this project is to develop a way of 'ageing' a facial image to give a realistic impression of what the missing child will look like now. If successful, the system will be a major boost to the work of those locating missing children: it will provide accurate images rapidly and simply at a fraction of the current cost.The project will develop algorithms, or step-by-step problem-solving procedures, that can be used to age a facial image. These will be based on studies of facial variation in children over two critical stages in their development which will be undertaken at Dundee University, and from existing face data archives held at the University of Kent. The project will benefit from having very close interaction and guidance from the National Missing Persons Helpline (NMPH) and VisionMetric, a company that has a good deal of commercial experience in developing forensic imaging applications.The final outcome of the project will be a software system that can be used on standard hardware and over the Internet. To get to this stage, however, there will be a series of project stages:Compiling and annotating a photographic database of children's faces spanning two main developmental phases (at Dundee)Developing a comprehensive statistical model of facial appearance (at Kent)Developing person-specific age transformation techniques (at Dundee and Kent)Developing these techniques to make them quick and user-friendly, so that they can be used for practical or commercial development (at Kent)Practical implementation of the software system (at Kent, involving VisionMetric, NMPH and the Metropolitan Police)