EFIT-V - : interactive evolutionary strategy for the construction of photo-realistic facial composites

Facial composite systems are used to create a likeness to a suspect in criminal investigations. Traditional, feature-based facial composite systems rely on the witness' ability to recall individual features, provide verbal descriptions and then select them from stored libraries of labelled features - a task which witnesses often find difficult. The EFIT-V facial composite system is based on different principles, employing a holistic (whole face) approach to construction.

The witness is shown a number of randomly generated faces and is asked to select the one that best resembles the target. A genetic algorithm is then used to breed a new generation of faces based upon the selected individual. This process is repeated until the user is satisfied with the composite generated.

This paper describes the main components and methodology of EFIT-V and showcases the strengths of the system.