Contact Information: Media Contacts: Whitney Glockner 3VR Security, Inc. wglockner(at)3vr(dot)com +1 415 874 2527 Dana Zemack or Leonora Stevens LaunchSquad 3vr(at)launchsquad(dot)com +1 415 625 8555
Korean National Police Agency / SKNetworks Study Shows 3VR Video Facial Recognition Most Accurate & Most Scalable
Unique Approach to Facial Surveillance Credited With 90 Percent Accuracy in Field Tests
| Source: 3VR Security, Inc.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - April 16, 2009) - 3VR
Security, Inc., the
searchable surveillance leader, today announced the recently published
results of a rigorous study of facial recognition technologies conducted by
the Korean National Police Agency (NPA). The report summarizes two years of
rigorous testing across a broad spectrum of competing solutions, ultimately
confirming the 3VR platform as the most comprehensive, accurate and
fastest-performing surveillance network solution on the market today.
The NPA requested that SKNetworks, one of Korea's largest security
companies, aid them in the testing of various biometric and facial
recognition technologies.
"Before testing 3VR, we were unable to get any results that would be
satisfactory to the Korean government," said Sung-Ho Kong, SKNetworks. "We
needed to achieve accuracy of around 90 percent with very low false
positives for the test to be considered a success, and only 3VR was able to
achieve these results consistently."
"In 2008, we performed a live, uncontrolled test of 3VR's facial
recognition technology in Seoul subway stations, where the solution was an
impressive 85-92 percent accurate, depending on conditions," said Kong. "No
other solution approached this level of accuracy, vastly improving our
ability to track, find and thwart crime in subways and other highly
populated areas, which had previously proven extremely difficult to
monitor."
Over the past several years, high-profile kidnappings have left many South
Korean citizens extremely concerned for their safety. In one case, the
President of Korea took the extreme step of tasking thousands of his
country's police to review millions of hours of government surveillance
video in the hopes of finding clues surrounding a child's recent
disappearance. However, without adequate technology to help the police sort
through the massive volumes of video surveillance data, the effort was
unsuccessful, spurring the government's search for a surveillance solution
with comprehensive search capabilities.
"In order to deploy the best facial surveillance and recognition
infrastructure throughout Korea, it is required to build real-time criminal
surveillance & investigation centers and develop various core technologies,
such as a central watch list database system and video compensation
technology," said Jong-Moon Byun, NPA. "Our project proved that it is
technically possible to compare and match facial images extracted from
real-time CCTV streaming against watch list databases, and we feel very
confident that we will be able to adopt this new facial technology in
real-world NPA surveillance and criminal investigation work."
"Subways and other public, highly-trafficked areas present numerous
challenges in terms of facial recognition and tracking," said Mr. Byun.
"After our government project, we verified that it is really feasible to
track and recognize faces in fast-moving crowds of thousands with less than
ideal circumstances, like poor lighting and limited photo angles. So, if we
integrate this new technology in the future with CCTV surveillance centers,
which are run by municipal governments, it would be possible to achieve
highly efficient surveillance infrastructure with less cost."
3VR's facial recognition technology was specifically designed to address
the inherent challenges of video-based biometrics, and the company has
filed over a dozen patents regarding their unique approaches to these
problems. Previous technologies, designed primarily for the analysis of
passport-style photographs, have generally failed in the context of video,
where pose, lighting, motion and other factors are "uncontrolled" and can
vary widely from face-to-face.
"This study demonstrates the breakthrough power of 3VR's patented facial
surveillance technology," said Tim Frederick, director of engineering at
3VR. "Unlike other attempts at high-volume face surveillance, which
re-purposed still-image face recognition algorithms, the South Korean study
benefited from 3VR's end-to-end video analysis system, specifically
designed for this type of demanding video application."
About 3VR
3VR Security, Inc., the searchable
surveillance leader, provides the first intelligent video management system
powered by a search engine with integrated video analytics. 3VR systems
lower physical and operational costs while dramatically improving the
effectiveness and efficiency of investigations for fraud, theft, and other
crimes. Based in San Francisco, CA, the company is privately held with
funding from Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Buyers, VantagePoint Ventures,
In-Q-Tel, and DAG Ventures. 3VR is the three-time winner of the SIA best
new video product, was named security product of the year from Frost &
Sullivan 2006 and 2007 among other awards. For more information please
visit www.3vr.com