Reflections in eyes could be used to help solve crimes
Researchers are developing technology that can zoom in on the eyes of a subject in a photo and get an image of what they are seeing
"I get lost in your eyes," you say? Researchers are working on ways to find you and save the resulting image for posterity - or for a criminal investigation.
Scientists have found that photo portraits of an individual can yield images of the photographer or people standing close to the photographer. These additional images appear as reflections in the eyes of the photo's subject.
You could think of it as a foray into extreme facial recognition
Even though enhancements of the images appear blurry, they carry enough detail to allow others to identify the people reflected in the subject's eyes.
Several research teams are pursuing the approach, known as corneal imaging, with a range of applications in mind. Criminal forensics and surveillance, including the potential to reconstruct the immediate environment that the subject of the photo occupies, are some examples. Others include advanced computer graphics, facial and iris identification, and robotics, researchers say.
Much of this work involves close-ups of the eye, plus sophisticated computer processing, to yield sharp reflected images.
But Dr Rob Jenkins, with the University of York in Britain, and collaborator Christie Kerr at the University of Glasgow, have shown that useful images for identifying persons of interest in a crime do not have to be razor sharp, given humans' remarkable ability at pattern recognition.
Faces can be reconstructed from images taken with commercial digital cameras and enhanced with off-the-shelf image-processing software.