This paper presents an exploratory attempt to use high-resolution radar measurements for face identification in forensic applications. An imaging radar system developed by JPL was used to measure a human face at 670 GHz. Frontal views of the face were measured both with and without a ski mask at a range of 25 m. The realized spatial resolution was roughly 1 cm in all three dimensions. The surfaces of the ski mask and the face were detected by using the two dominating reflections from amplitude data. Various methods for visualization of these surfaces are presented. The possibility to use radar data to determine certain face distance measures between well-defined face landmarks, typically used for anthropometric statistics, was explored. The measures used here were face length, frontal breadth and interpupillary distance. In many cases the radar system seems to provide sufficient information to exclude an innocent subject from suspicion. For an accurate identification it is believed that a system must provide significantly more information.

Date Published: 13 October 2011
PDF: 15 pages
Proc. SPIE 8188, Millimetre Wave and Terahertz Sensors and Technology IV, 818809 (13 October 2011); doi: 10.1117/12.897513

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8188:
Millimetre Wave and Terahertz Sensors and Technology IV
Keith A. Krapels; Neil Anthony Salmon; Eddie Jacobs, Editor(s)