J Forensic Sci, November 2010, Vol. 55, No. 6 doi: 10.1111/j.1556-4029.2010.01557.x Available online at: onlinelibrary.wiley.com
BOOK REVIEW Carl N. Stephan,1 Ph.D.
Review of: Computer-Aided Forensic Facial Comparison REFERENCE: Evison PE, Vorder Bruegge RW. Computeraided forensic facial comparison. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2009, 183 pp. The preface of Computer-Aided Forensic Facial Comparison pitches this book as an initial attempt to address a number of scientific and technical issues in forensic facial comparison, and it succeeds in doing that. This edited volume reports the findings from a large-sampled 2-year research project on landmark-based analysis of 3D facial form. The book gives focus to a variety of topics across 12 chapters, including 3D face capture and human face variability. In addition to the written text, a library of raw coordinate data is also provided. As stated by the editors of the book, these data can be used for independent crime prevention and detection research and as such provide for a valuable resource. The DVD library contains coordinates of 30 landmarks on each participant’s face, for >3000 living individuals. Also included are preliminary and prototypic software tools for (what is ultimately) 2D facial comparison, which were developed during the project. These generous supplements will no doubt be of value to many readers and will probably justify the outright purchase of the volume. The book devotes prime attention to one particular type of 3D scanner—the now discontinued Geometrix FaceVision FV802 Series Biometric Camera (ALIVE tech, Cumming, GA). Two other instruments were also employed for data collection but on a vastly reduced scale: the Cyberware 3030PS Head and Neck Scanner (Cyberware, Inc., Monterey, CA) and the 3dMDface System (3dMD, Atlanta, GA). After a general introduction by the editors in Chapter 1, Goodwin et al. compare scans generated from the three aforementioned digitizers for artifacts (spikes, stretching and discrepancies in texture map alignment, etc.) and metric differences in landmark position (caliper measurements are used as the gold standard). In Chapter 3, Morecroft et al. explore 60 facial landmarks to determine which ones are optimal for 3D face scan analysis. In Chapter 4, Evison and colleagues revisit the makeup of the 3D scan sample and subject it to a principal components
analysis to examine how individuals vary by sex, age, and ancestry in respect to these PCs (the first PC is given almost sole attention). In Chapter 5, Morecroft et al. explore the effects of image parameters (lighting, resolution, illumination, etc.) on the manual placement of landmarks. In Chapter 6, Goodwin et al. elucidate the patterns of visibility of 30 landmarks (arrived at in Chapter 3) with 10 degree increments of rotation between )90 to +90 degrees about two orthogonal axes (y and x). In Chapter 7, Schofield et al. explore the effect of perspective and lens distortion in silico by switching-out simulated lenses and changing subject–camera distances within the software environment of 3ds Max (Autodesk , San Rafael, CA). In Chapter 8, Maylin et al. explore the value of an active shape model to automate facial landmark placement in 3D, using 40 manually landmarked faces as a training set. In Chapter 9, Morecroft and Fieller provide solutions for missing landmarks ⁄ data. In Chapter 10, Mallett provides a very general review of the responsibilities of the expert witness and what information is admissible in court. In Chapter 11, Morecroft and Evison present a short description on the software tools included with the book, and in Chapter 12 the editors summarize the work and provide a synthesis of its major findings, the climax on p.163 being that ‘‘the 3D distribution of anthropometric landmarks studied herein, is unlikely to be sufficient to allow for identification of individuals to the exclusion of all others.’’ Strengths of this book lie with: the research results on 3D face variation and the total size of the sample analyzed; the breadth of different topics examined; and the supplemental data and software features included with the volume. Weaknesses are as follows: use of outdated and now discontinued technology; the preliminary and small-sampled nature of many of the sub-section studies; occasional oversights to details (text in figures is often tiny and difficult to read, color figures appear in the midst of Chapter 11, etc.). In summary, the editors’ preface outlines this book nicely—it is a useful first look that draws on a large sample, but it is not an exhaustive thesis.
1 Forensic Anthropologist and ORISE Research Participant, Joint POW ⁄ MIA Accounting Command, 310 Worchester Avenue, Hickam Air Force Base, HI.
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2010 American Academy of Forensic Sciences Published 2010. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the U.S.A.