Pocket PC face recognition software unmasked

A US company has developed software that uses the image of your face as authentication for applications such as ecommerce transactions on handheld PCs.

Visionics said the software, called FaceIt, has been designed for Pocket PC devices with built-in cameras. Pocket PCs are handheld devices, launched in April, that run the latest version of Microsoft's Windows CE operating system.

The authentication software captures a facial image, extracts the face, converts it into a unique digital code - called a faceprint - and transmits the print to a server for authentication.

By confirming the match, FaceIt ties the identity of the person to the actions being performed.

Visionics said FaceIt could also be used by law enforcement agencies for mobile identification of criminals.

Once a facial image has been captured, it can be checked against a database of several thousand individual fingerprints stored in memory.

Visionics said that running biometric technologies on handheld devices is a significant challenge as they typically use low-end processors that do not have sufficient power to support the computationally intensive biometric algorithms.

However, the company said that during the last twelve months it has made several advances in its technology that allow it to run the software on low-end processors. These advances include a thousand-fold improvement in matching speed and a forty-fold reduction in the template size of the faceprint that captures the facial identity, said Visionics.