XID

I am a big fan of these guys. They use software to generate hundreds or thousands of 3D views of a person based on a single passport-style photo. Sometimes face recognition in access control has less than stellar performance because photos on surveillance don’t look like standard, front-lit passport photos. Government officials are preparing to use 3D technology like the stuff Facial Synthesis creates to turn their existing bad guy mug shot databases into watchlists that could be compared against less controlled photos, such as those from surveillance. This has huge implications both in terms of identifying suspects and in terms of clearing the innocent.

Check out this video for a primer on how XID's technology works.