2.2 VISUAL PROCESSING
In a biological context, visual processing is the interpretation and understanding of visual information that allows us to identify what we see, to interpret size, shape, distances etc. From a technological perspective, visual processing, or computer vision, is the mimicry of the human visual system by a machine and it concerns the extraction, analysis and understanding of information from images. The work of law enforcement has long been supported by visual information – be it pictures or videos of persons, vehicles or locations of interest. In fact, law enforcement was very much transformed with the advent of surveillance technology, in particular CCTV, which became widely available during the 1960s and 1970s. Surveillance technology has allowed law enforcement to quickly identify victims, perpetrators or other persons of interest and, in doing so, to solve crimes. Surveillance technologies have undergone considerable advancements over the years, including body-worn cameras (bodycams) and patrol drones, but it is with AI that perhaps the most impressive outcomes may materialize.Â
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